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I noticed there isn't a thread for Africa, and individual countries aren't popular enough to sustain threads for long. So let's give it a shot. Mostly for selfish reasons so I can immediately ask for advice on several countries  What is Africa? Africa is the 2nd biggest continent, in terms of area and population, consisting of at least 54 countries. Depending on who's counting. The Mercator map we all know and love is a liar and makes Africa look smaller than it is. It's significantly bigger than Russia, and bigger than the US, China, and India together.  Destinations I'm by no means an expert on Africa. But from a European perspective, Norther Africa is very popular for tourism since it's close, cheap, and has relatively developed tourism industries. Recently this has been mostly Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt due to relative safety and stability. The next big cluster I would say is East Africa, mainly Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. These are popular for safaris, hiking, climbing and sea activities on the coasts or nearby islands like Zanzibar, which seems to be extremely popular. Finally, in the South, South Africa and Namibia are usually the biggest destinations. Huge for safaris, deserts, wine, whale and sharks, etc. This is of course not to dismiss other locations! But as a result of all sorts of socioeconomic and geopolitical reasons these seem to be the most typical travel spots for Western normies. Transportation Renting a car or hiring a driver can be a good option. I found driving in South Africa myself perfectly fine, the roads were great and behavior pretty reasonable. However, in other locations though it might make more sense to have a local driver. In my experience public transport, when it exists, is very ad-hoc and unreliable. A bus may or may not arrive, there will be no posted time schedule, or even a bus stop. In many cases this would be a small minivan like Transit, crammed full of people. It can be a fun and rewarding experience though as you'll have a chance to talk to local people instead of being isolated in your rolling AC box. For longer distances it's probably just air. Languages Africa of course has a wide range of local native languages, however many countries retained their colonial languages as their official languages, and even if not everyone is universally fluent in them, knowing some of them would be extremely helpful for getting around. Of course English is also more universally spoken among the educated urban populations. In addition, Arabic, French, and Portuguese should cover it pretty well. Here's a map stolen from wikipedia:  Vaccination Not talking about rona here. Some countries require that you're vaccinated against certain diseases before they'll let you in. Others might be just a good idea. Terms and conditions apply, so check this before you go! Here's for example South Africa: quote:South Africa requires a valid International Certificate of Vaccination or Prophylaxis (ICVP) documenting yellow fever vaccination ≥10 days before arrival in South Africa for all travelers aged ≥1 year traveling from or transiting for >12 hours through the airport of a country with risk of yellow fever virus transmission. South Africa considers a one-time dose of yellow fever vaccine (properly documented with an ICVP) to be good for the life of the traveler Countries The Gambia: Overview, Trip reports part 1 2 3 4 5 mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 21:21 on Jan 30, 2023 |
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Oct 21, 2022 12:02
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So far I've been to Tunisia, Egypt, Ethiopia, and South Africa. From a few days to weeks, so my knowledge varies, but feel free to AMA. On the other hand, I'm going to The Gambia in late November for about 10 days. So far I don't have very specific plans, so any suggestions are welcome. I'm also eyeing a flight to Rwanda for like $400 for next year (January-June). Curious if anyone has recent experience there too, and if it would be worthwhile for another 10-14 days or so.
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Oct 21, 2022 12:06
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Probably could just use an "everything besides Western Europe, Disney, Japan, and SEA" megathread based on how this subforum moves. I see you're not the poster who went to Ethiopia for the skateboarding stuff; where'd you go? I've been around Egypt (almost everywhere except Sinai and Siwa), Tunisia (everywhere except the NW), Morocco (just a couple weeks roadtripping around Marrakech), Cameroon (10 day roadtrip from Yaounde to and around the mountains on the English speaking-French speaking border), Namibia (3 weeks, center, west, & north), Kenya (just Nairobi for a few days), Angola (just Luanda for a single day), Tanzania (about 10 days around the parks in the north, didn't do Killi), and Ethiopia (4 weeks, covered most of Amhara and Tigray areas, plus the Danakil Depression). I'm big into the idea of overlanding, but in practice I know I'd get bored with it if done continuously, so on holidays I generally just fly somewhere for 2-4 weeks, rent a car, drive around a lot, then fly back out. I do enjoy reading those blogs when I find them though, they're full of miserable adventures. This one of a Belgian couple who drove from Lumumbashi to Kinshasa was one of my favorites. It's a long read but may be up your alley. https://expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/democratic-republic-of-congo-lubumbashi-to-kinshasa.50799/ I've got half a bookshelf full of similar voyages done by people in the 1800s and early 1900s. Samuel Baker's are among my favorite, even though there is way too much detail about shooting elephants, it's nuts that he was going through the whole Sudan with his wife in tow, and just the two of them, in like 1860 while trying to outwit and eliminate Turkish slavers. Austen Henry Layard's two books about Mosul are also super interesting, although in that case he's just observing the collapse of the Turkish empire while mostly just trying to do his own thing with archaeology and not get murdered, rather than trying to actively take part in the local politics like Samuel Baker ended up doing. Saladman fucked around with this message at 12:59 on Oct 21, 2022 |
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Oct 21, 2022 12:54
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Saladman posted:Probably could just use an "everything besides Western Europe, Disney, Japan, and SEA" megathread based on how this subforum moves. I see you're not the poster who went to Ethiopia for the skateboarding stuff; where'd you go? Nope that wasn't me skateboarding in Ethiopia, but I remember that thread! I was around Addis for a few days, that was on the way to South Africa. I certainly wish I had more time back then for the rest of the country, but who knew it would erupt in a civil war! quote:I've been around Egypt (almost everywhere except Sinai and Siwa), Tunisia (everywhere except the NW), Morocco (just a couple weeks roadtripping around Marrakech), Cameroon (10 day roadtrip from Yaounde to and around the mountains on the English speaking-French speaking border), Namibia (3 weeks, center, west, & north), Kenya (just Nairobi for a few days), Angola (just Luanda for a single day), Tanzania (about 10 days around the parks in the north, didn't do Killi), and Ethiopia (4 weeks, covered most of Amhara and Tigray areas, plus the Danakil Depression). I like the idea of overlanding too, but do fear that I'd get sick of it pretty quickly. I did a rally around our country last year and it was just so much effort during one week lol. Even traveling normally with nice hotels and good transport and stuff after a about 3 weeks I just kind of want to get back to waking up in my bed and not having to worry about what's going to happen that day. Still, definitely something I'd want to try at some point. quote:https://expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/democratic-republic-of-congo-lubumbashi-to-kinshasa.50799/ There's a goon who bought an old French car that was originally bought in the Congo and there's an actual published book about that car. It's nuts. Hadlock posted:Ok well the car hasn't arrived yet, but the title arrived in the mail today, so that's a start
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Oct 21, 2022 14:42
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mobby_6kl posted:I was around Addis for a few days, that was on the way to South Africa. I certainly wish I had more time back then for the rest of the country, but who knew it would erupt in a civil war! I was in Amhara and Tigray in Jan-Feb 2020, and in a post I wrote on the now-dead Lonely Planet, I wrote something along the lines of "there sure are a lot of military checkpoints in Tigray that we never saw anywhere else in the country. We drove by because we were in our own car and were not Ethiopian, but they were stopping every bus and checking the IDs of every.single.person on the buses, at the entrance and exit of every large town". We used a guide for Danakil and he mentioned that he thought Abiy was a bloodsucking vampire, which we thought was ridiculous at the time (although we did not rebut him), but it turned out to be largely correct. For Tanzania, that was the only time I used an organized tour for the entire time in my entire life, even as a kid with my parents; our family is all strongly allergic to guides. I'm actually not sure there's a legal way to see northern Tanzania independently, to be honest. I'm pretty sure you have to use a guide in every national park, so... might as well get a tour to do all of them for you. It was me and a friend of mine from high school. She had gone to Zanzibar before we met up, but I was with my family in Rome for Christmas so we only joined up afterwards in Arusha, which is more or less the tourist capital of Tanzania. She liked Zanzibar a lot, had no issue as a solo young female traveller, but she mainly just chilled in and around Stone Town for like 4 days before heading to Arusha. Here are some photos to make this thread more interesting for people who stumble across it: Egypt, Elephantine:  Morocco, High Atlas (close to 31.29°N, 7.38°W)  Tanzania, every single road in the parks:  Tunisia, Chenini:  Ethiopia, Lalibela (looking north from the city; the city is on a huge hill):  Cameroon, French colonial impact:  Namibia, Big Daddy Dune: 
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Oct 21, 2022 20:29
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Well, I had zero luck convincing my wife to go to a now-somewhat-cuturally-chilled Saudi Arabia, so instead we're going to Algeria for the pre-Ramadan season in March. I'll make a trip report for it. So far it's a pain in the rear end with the visa process, like for me it's a 3 hour one-way trip to the Consulate General which requires going in person. Also oddly, the requirements for getting a visa are super different in different countries so looking up posts online (if you can find them) isn't even that helpful. Like sometimes you need bank statements, sometimes you need travel insurance, sometimes you need flights booked, sometimes you need a proof of your place of work, even the cost of a visa is different (it's €110 for me as a US citizen applying in Europe, it would be $160 if I applied in the USA), sometimes you have to go in person, sometimes it's by mail... sometimes you can deposit the app by mail and have to pick it up in person, sometimes you have to deposit the app in person and they will send your passport back by registered post, etc. I guess OTOH it is a huge pain in the rear end for Algerians to get visas to go to anywhere else, so I guess in the principle of reciprocity it's fair. Once in the country it also looks complicated. Do you need a special visa to go to the south (officially yes, tourguide says: no), you need to leave your original passport when you rent a car, but you also need your original passport in order to check into any hotel – so if you're not a dual citizen, get hosed if you want to rent a car. Even in fairly big cities like Annaba there are sometimes literally zero hotels that have online presence, there's an illegal black market exchange rate for cash with a ~40% premium, theoretically ATMs exist but whether they will work or not with your network is anyone's guess, etc etc. I contacted 3 tour agencies for the far south and only one of them even responded, and I only found like 4 tour agencies that even exist. They certainly make it complicated -- and it has gotten easier in the past 10 years. Also as far as I can tell the only guidebooks for Algeria that exist are the Petit Fute (2020) in French and Trescher Verlag (2015) in German, apparently with a new edition coming at the end of the year. I found a handful of blogs, but most of them were from the people who want to go to all 193 countries or whatever, and thus spent like 2 days in Algiers and then wrote about their experiences in ~*~*Algeria~*~*. It probably won't make anyone's list of Must Visit countries even if the visa process was less of a hassle, but we both also have personal reasons to want to visit. I'm curious how your Gambia trip goes, even though I imagine it also won't get added to my "future vacations" list.
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Nov 17, 2022 11:39
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I know a couple of people who've been to southern Algeria, mainly to visit the World Heritage Site (Tassili n'Ajjer). I'm not sure exactly when the most recent person visited (her review of the WHS was dated March-2022 but may well be from earlier). Basically she said she flew from Algiers to Djenet and was guided the entire time. You have to register with the police and basically your guide needs a satellite phone handy at all times so they can contact you and check where you are. This is her review of visiting: https://www.worldheritagesite.org/list/id/179#userreview_18472 My wife and I are aiming for "most" World Heritage Sites as well, and though we haven't tackled Algeria it's definitely on the list - maybe a bit further down!
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Nov 18, 2022 10:04
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webmeister posted:I know a couple of people who've been to southern Algeria, mainly to visit the World Heritage Site (Tassili n'Ajjer). I'm not sure exactly when the most recent person visited (her review of the WHS was dated March-2022 but may well be from earlier). Basically she said she flew from Algiers to Djenet and was guided the entire time. You have to register with the police and basically your guide needs a satellite phone handy at all times so they can contact you and check where you are. Much of Tassili n Ajjer and *all* of Hoggar except for Assekrem are off limits, and even Assekrem is only accessible two days a week. For Tassili you can visit this part from Djanet: https://www.fancyalgeria.com/djanet-trip Ghardaia also requires you to be with a guide at all times and is quite restrictive, although I think that’s because the locals in Mzab are Taliban-level of societally conservative rather than general safety issues like further south.
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Nov 18, 2022 11:48
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For as much of pain in the rear end the US (or Canadian) visa process is, at least it's fairly clear and you can get the actual official requirements. A lot of the developing countries are a bit of a mystery. For a layover in Ethiopia I had to physically go to another country to apply in person, and then argue with them about definitions of 24 hours vs "1 day" or something like that If you google "gambia visa policy", what looks like the DC embassy says this quote:American passport holders and most visitors DO require visas to travel to The Gambia. The Banjul airport page says you can get the visa on arrival and that lots of countries (including Canada and EU) are exempt. https://www.banjulairport.com/en/visa_gambia.php When I originally researched this, I eventually found what looked like a jpeg of an order signed by the president declaring some countries to be visa-excempt which I thought was official looking enough to trust. --- In other news, I can't find any proof that I had the yellow fever vaccination done (when I went to SA a few years back). It's not required for The Gambia but might mean I'm not going to Senegal/back, because the few places that do those vaccines here are booked for a month straight. Oops. Also the return flight could be canceled because of a planned cabin crew strike.
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Nov 23, 2022 11:54
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mobby_6kl posted:For as much of pain in the rear end the US (or Canadian) visa process is, at least it's fairly clear and you can get the actual official requirements. A lot of the developing countries are a bit of a mystery. For a layover in Ethiopia I had to physically go to another country to apply in person, and then argue with them about definitions of 24 hours vs "1 day" or something like that You had to get a visa to go to Ethiopia? Did you not enter and exit through Addis? It's kind of weird how you can use an e-visa if you fly into Addis but that you need a physical visa in advance for every other border. Also weird the disconnect between Gambia's theoretical requirements and what the embassy says. So hard to know who is right too. I imagine the Reddit and TripAdvisor forums for Gambia are not exactly ringing off the hook with activity either. [Checks] Actually wow, the TA forum is quite active. I hope this person isn't you, https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/ShowTopic-g293794-i9249-k14183913-The_Gambia_Embassy_Washington_DC-Gambia.html
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Nov 23, 2022 16:16
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Saladman posted:You had to get a visa to go to Ethiopia? Did you not enter and exit through Addis? It's kind of weird how you can use an e-visa if you fly into Addis but that you need a physical visa in advance for every other border. And no, thankfully that's not me lol. No visa (hopefully) required for this guy  E: Well I left checking the drone regulations to the last day before departure, thinking it's going to be ether allowed or be a pain in the rear end with permits. I'd only just make some vids for personal use so whatever. Except their Civil Aviation Authority website's been down for like half a year apparently. I found it on the wayback machine but the actual documents are inaccessible lol: https://web.archive.org/web/2020080...d=22&Itemid=235 Seems unlikely they'll just confiscate it at the airport as Egyptians apparently do but uhh. mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 14:50 on Nov 25, 2022 |
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Nov 23, 2022 19:35
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I have the chance to take up to 10 days off in March and me and my GF want to travel somewhere in Africa. We will be based in EU in March so the flights are a little bit more manageable than flying from the US. We are quite active, love animals and nature, and open for any suggestions. Based on our initial research, we were thinking about Namibia - Botswana - Victoria Falls or around Tanzania but we discussed potentially climbing Kilimanjaro in the future and not this time. Also, what are your thoughts on prebooked tour packages from providers such as Intrepid Travel? Any recommendations will be greatly appreciated! Thank you. Busy Bee fucked around with this message at 10:56 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 10:52
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If you're wanting to do Kilimanjaro another time, then I'd save Tanzania for then as well. I think a few people here have done the Namibia-Botswana area (I haven't been yet), so they can probably offer decent advice. If you're a bit more adventurous and/or experienced travellers, Senegal and Gambia can be quite a good combo, or Uganda and Rwanda have good stuff to offer as well. And of course there's the Arab states of North Africa - Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco in particular. I've done a couple of trips with Intrepid and I'd definitely recommend them if you aren't a particularly experienced traveller. I went with them in a couple of countries and had a great time - they're aimed at a market that's essentially halfway between "young 20-somethings getting wasted at night and sleeping on a bus during the day" and "geriatrics on a coach trip". So mostly people in their late 20s and 30s interested in more historical and cultural kind of experiences. Just be aware that your group leader is a chaperone, not a tour guide. When you arrive in a new city it'll typically be "here's your hotel, I recommend seeing x/y/z, eating a/b/c, watch out for these particular scams, our train is tomorrow night so be in the lobby by 3pm tomorrow, have fun". Outside of particular circumstances, they generally aren't going to babysit you.
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Nov 29, 2022 12:30
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webmeister posted:If you're wanting to do Kilimanjaro another time, then I'd save Tanzania for then as well. I think a few people here have done the Namibia-Botswana area (I haven't been yet), so they can probably offer decent advice. If you're a bit more adventurous and/or experienced travellers, Senegal and Gambia can be quite a good combo, or Uganda and Rwanda have good stuff to offer as well. And of course there's the Arab states of North Africa - Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco in particular. Thanks for the recommendations. I've traveled to Senegal before and North Africa can be saved for another time so I'm looking more for the South / South East part of Africa. We are experienced travelers but I feel that perhaps an "organized" tour in those regions would be ideal since I have an impression that public transport is not the most reliable in some of those areas.
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Nov 29, 2022 13:06
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Busy Bee posted:I have the chance to take up to 10 days off in March and me and my GF want to travel somewhere in Africa. We will be based in EU in March so the flights are a little bit more manageable than flying from the US. Do you speak French? More interested on a guided tour or on DIY and self-drive? 10 days is pretty short for Namibia, especially if that includes your travel days. The coolest sites are pretty far apart, I'd say 14 day minimum to hit Windhoek-Sossusvlei-Skeleton Coast-Etosha-Waterberg-Windhoek unless you're doing fly-in fly-out. March is also the tail-end of rainy season which means there's water everywhere in the north, which means animals are very dispersed, so you won't get an experience like the famous photos of Etosha with 94491 animals around a watering hole. For nature it's unbeatable, rainy season or no. Driving is also fine, even in rainy season it's still fairly dry in terms of dirt roads -- just not dry in terms of high animal concentrations. 10 days including travel days would be perfect to do the whole Serengeti - Arusha - Ngorongoro - Manyara area, as it's pretty compact. Tour mandatory. Many options depending on your budget. Vic Falls and Okavango would be good also for 10 days. Again end of rainy season so Vic Falls will be more impressive and the Okavango delta will be flooded. I haven't been there so not sure what that means in practice, but it's definitely open all year around. Both Namibia and Botswana are geared towards very high-end honeymoon and rich older people tourism and are in general crazy expensive just fyi, unless you are camping. When we were in Namibia the average age of the tourists we met was probably about 50, which makes sense as the cheapest lodge within 2 hour travel time was often like $250/night. For history and culture I'd definitely vote for northern Africa but not so much for animals. For nature, Morocco is pretty great. IMO go for northern Tanzania based on what you said - in terms of animals it just blows everywhere else out of the water. Like I spent 10 days in Cameroon on a roadtrip and saw 0 animals, spent a month in Ethiopia and I saw a dead hyena by the road, a few Ethiopian wolves, and a couple hippos. Spent 3 weeks in Namibia and saw a bunch of giraffes and zebras, one troop of elephants, and a bunch of hyraxes and oryx - don't think we saw a single predator. Spent many months in north Africa and literally never seen a single wild animal, except some fennec tracks in the Egyptian desert. One day in the Serengeti I saw more than in the entire rest of my time in southern Africa combined. Either private or join a group - depends on your personality. I went with a childhood friend and we did a private tour, and it was like $3000 total for the 9 days - and that was the extremely-budget option fwiw. Even with a private tour we did hang out with other people at all the campsites, except for lunches sometimes it was just the two of us. Saladman fucked around with this message at 15:39 on Nov 29, 2022 |
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Nov 29, 2022 15:30
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Saladman posted:Do you speak French? More interested on a guided tour or on DIY and self-drive? I do not speak French. I rarely do guided tours and open for DIY / Self Drive but probably a guided tour is best for some of the places I am interested in visiting in Africa. I've been to Morocco and with my time off in March, I would prefer to travel somewhere further such as south of Africa. Really appreciate your input here - I guess our budget can be quite flexible for a 10 day trip. Perhaps excluding air fare we would prefer around $1000 ~ $2000 but can go higher depending. Do you have any recommendations on private / guided tour companies? And besides safaris, did you have any good experiences with hiking in any places in Africa? Busy Bee fucked around with this message at 10:06 on Nov 30, 2022 |
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Nov 30, 2022 10:01
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Busy Bee posted:I do not speak French. I rarely do guided tours and open for DIY / Self Drive but probably a guided tour is best for some of the places I am interested in visiting in Africa. $1000-$2000 pp for 10 days should be fine for most places. Hiking: I've only done hiking trips in Ethiopia, in the Simien range. Loved it, such crazy scenery. For Ethiopia, if you wanted you could do Addis-Lalibela-Simien-Gondar in 10 days on that budget. Unfortunately Axum and the rock churches of Tigray are off-limits now, and getting to Danakil is now much harder and takes a couple days since you can't go via Mekele anymore, but anyway in 10 days you wouldn't be able to do all of those spots anyway. In Tanzania I met up with people who did Killi just before we met them, and those same people I went around Cameroon with also did Mt Cameroon. They said Killi was a lot easier, it's not nearly as steep, and much more interesting. I had some other friends also do hiking in the Rwenzori, they said it was also pretty neat. In general though since I live in Switzerland, going hiking when on vacation has not been much of a priority for me since, while I love mountains, I also get a lot of it at home.
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Nov 30, 2022 12:05
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I did the Kilimanjaro climb back in 2011 and yeah I wouldn't say it's particularly hard, to be honest. We did a 6.5 day trek, which is basically 5 days up and 1.5 days back down. Generally you're better off doing the longer routes so that you've got more time to acclimatise and reduce the risk of altitude sickness. We took Diamox as well which probably helped with the altitude. If you're in good (cardio) fitness it's definitely doable without any particular training. You just need to be capable of walking 6-8 hours in a day, mostly uphill. There's a couple of steep sections but nothing crazy. And of course you've got porters to carry your gear, set up your tents, cook food etc. I was sore for a few days after we finished the trek, but what better way to recover than sitting in a jeep for a week and driving across the Serengeti looking at animals.
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Nov 30, 2022 13:41
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Yo I'm in The Gambia right now, posting from the (only?) mall with a food court lol. I'll do a more detailed writeup later but this is definitely more of a culture ~vibes~ thing than animals or nature. I've seen wild hippos monkeys and chimps and baboons but I don't think it would compare well to Tanzania on that front (Much cheaper though). The country is mostly flat so basically you just have the river to spice things up. Also spent a couple of days in Senegal and it felt kind of similar tbh. I certainly don't regret getting the gently caress out of the miserable cold for almost two weeks, but if you're looking for the most impressive experience, this is probably not the right place. Met a Spanish guy here who was in Tanzania earlier this year, he did the Kilimanjaro climb. The way he described it, is that it's definitely not easy because of the non-stop walking but that anyone in decent shape can make it up. There's no like actual mountain-climbing to deal with.
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Dec 6, 2022 16:48
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mobby_6kl posted:Yo I'm in The Gambia right now, posting from the (only?) mall with a food court lol. Are you in The Gambia for a regular vacation? I had assumed it had to be for a work thing or that you knew someone there. I see that Banjul actually has a lot of flights to Europe, which was surprise to me -- I thought it'd be like Bissau, which exclusively has flights to Lisbon. I see it's English-speaking, which I didn't know before, so maybe it's for people who would otherwise want to go to Senegal or Cap Verde but don't speak French or Portuguese and who really hate playing charades? I don't think I've ever heard anything about The Gambia except during their election with the crazy Kaddafi-lite dictator who fled. In Algeria news, I got my rendez-vous with the Algerian consulate right after New Year's, so here's hoping that one trip is enough and I don't have to do two six-hour (roundtrip, 3hr each way) drives to get my visa. Annoyingly I have to go to the consulate as the closer Algerian embassy doesn't do visas.
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Dec 7, 2022 12:48
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Saladman posted:Are you in The Gambia for a regular vacation? I had assumed it had to be for a work thing or that you knew someone there. I see that Banjul actually has a lot of flights to Europe, which was surprise to me -- I thought it'd be like Bissau, which exclusively has flights to Lisbon. Thanks to the English language it is like easy-mode Africa, Senegal was definitely more of a pain in the rear end (but doable) for me. I think the country is mainly popular as a beach resort destination from the UK, Spain and Portugal (thanks to the direct connections). And birders. Apparently it's really big with that crew, and there are indeed some cool birds here. I'm not quite that obsessed though. My plan though was always to see a few parks, do some boat trips and then chill on the beach for a few days because this year's been a gently caress.
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Dec 7, 2022 23:12
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I wanted to write up a trip report but all the background stuff took too much time/space so I'll have to do that as a separate post later. What is The Gambia It's the smallest country in continental Africa, located on the Western coast (it's slightly larger land area than Cyprus), surrounded on three sides by Senegal, and consisting entirely of the area around the River Gambia.  As usual, Europeans hosed around the area so it's now a separate country from Senegal, which otherwise has closely related people and cultures. Thankfully for me, The Gambia used to be British (which did gently caress all for development of the colony) so most people speak English which makes everything much easier. As opposed to Senegal, which used to be French and is thus a pain in the rear end. The population is around 2 million and most apparently lives on the coast. It's about 62% urbanized which is again similar to Cyprus or Ireland, but the "urban" areas are more like low-rise sprawling suburbs than actual cities.  The country is almost completely flat so there isn't crazy landscapes, and everything interesting tends to be around the River. There aren't huge natural parks with the Big Five animals like the typical Safari destinations, either. If you think you can do only one trip to Africa, I wouldn't make it my first choice, but I really greatly enjoyed my time here. The main reasons to visit IMO are
   The country seems like a fairly popular destination for British, Portuguese and Spanish visitors, mostly though they tend to stay in resorts so there isn't that much information available. Practical stuff  The Banjul airport isn't really in Banjul and is closer to the touristy areas on the coast. There's a $20 entry and exit fee (so $40 total) which can be paid in Dalasi, the local currency. In which case it works out a bit cheaper. The exchange rate as around 61-62 for both Euro and USD in touristy areas, less at the airport. There seem to be buses available, but a taxi to the town should be around $10. You can use local transport if you get a ride to the main road. Border crossing was easy. At the airport they "checked" for covid vaccination but not yellow fever. At land borders they checked nothing but the passport. Though the Senegalese guy at the exit tried to get  from me for the yellow fever vaccination. Which I was vaccinated against but didn't have any paperwork.Overall it's pretty cheap, but not cheap cheap, like what I would've expected in literally one of the poorest countries in the world (within bottom 20 in nominal GDP/capita). Here are some typical prices for stuff:
   There are no issues with safety. Never felt in any danger or threatened, even walking around at night as the only white guy for miles. In touristy areas people will occasionally approach you to sell you something or easily detected tourist scams. Just tell them politely to get lost. Apparently especially older women tend to get approached by handsome companions and either straight up ask for money or pretend to be actually interested. But that's not something I could've experienced, and no women approached me. As usual. More resources This is getting kind of long, so here are some useful resources I found There's some good information on this page: http://www.accessgambia.com/information/ The Rough Guide to Gambia guidebook is also very detailed and helpful. It's a bit outdated and prices are 2-3x what is listed. https://www.amazon.com/Rough-Guide-...ps%2C202&sr=8-1 I'll post some stuff from the actual trip later. But I'd be happy to expand on anything here if anyone is actually curious or has specific questions about something.
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Dec 21, 2022 16:19
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Thanks! I like reading those types of trip reports. Especially for places that are not so commonly visited independently, except by those travel bloggers who are trying to catch ‘em all, and who tell you all about their time in [country X] where they spent 3 days in the capital city before flying out to add another country to their Pokédex.
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Dec 22, 2022 23:39
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Saladman posted:Thanks! I like reading those types of trip reports. Especially for places that are not so commonly visited independently, except by those travel bloggers who are trying to catch ‘em all, and who tell you all about their time in [country X] where they spent 3 days in the capital city before flying out to add another country to their Pokédex. That said there's very little information online so maybe someone will find it useful eventually.Not going to do a full blog but just some highlights of points of interests or practical considerations, everything from Senegal on will probably get aggregated. One issue is that some people tend to not like being photographed so a lot of this is crappy phone photos as didn't want to swing my Canon gear around. Well that's for my excuses  The Gambia trip report The rough itinerary looked like this. I'm pretty happy with how everything worked out though of course there are a few things I would've planned differently knowing thins I know now.  Day 1  Day 1 was mostly getting some money changed, buying a sim card and getting used to things. There are ATMs and they do work with Mastercard but there's a pretty low cap and fixed commission of around 200d ($3) IIRC, not huge but changing cash works out better. Walking along the beach South, the beaches are pretty empty until around Senegambia. Although there are resorts along the coast, that's the main tourist hotspot, it's basically just a few streets full of restaurants and some more hotels. Looks pretty similar to touristy places in other developing countries:  There are several money exchange places with decent rates. They don't have them posted so you can negotiate a bit by saying the other place offered more I'd then head to the Tropic Shopping Center, which I think might be the only shopping mall in the country. There's an Africell office and a food court with local food for around five bucks. This is where the chicken menu above was from. The Bijilo Monkey Park is next door. Entry is 100d for foreigners IIRC, but they immediately try to upsell you on paying for a guide. I'd tell them to pound sand but managed to join a group of Senegalese visitors instead. It's a relatively small park and the monkeys are fed peanuts for visitors so it's not exactly an authentic wild experience but if you want to see monkeys up close that's a good way to do it. Day 2 So the main thing to visit IMO is the River Gambia National Park, Wassu Stone Circles, and Janjanbureh area. I've read an old blog from like 15 years ago saying you can get a boat cruise to get there but the company was gone and the one I found instead wanted like $500 for it so nope not gonna happen. For a more authentic experience you can take a local bus  The place to go is the GTSC Bus Station in Serrekunda: https://goo.gl/maps/SWggB4JBvLWEQxUy7 There's gently caress all information online so this is hard-won intel from the locals Pretty decent bus, like $2 for the trip to Janjanbureh. No A/C but it was surprisingly fine during this time. It took forever though because I got "randomly" chosen for a drug inspection at a checkpoint (there are quite a few of these, surprisingly) where they very thoroughly checked my backpack. It also stopped in some village for some reason and everyone had to get out. This gives you the opportunity to get some snacks and check out the local sheep  Annd also the bus had to pull over for about 30-40 minutes because The President's motorcade was driving in the opposite direction. Goddamn. https://i.imgur.com/iJrTovQ.mp4 Day 3 It was too late to do anything at that point so next day I and a Spanish guy I met on the bus hired a boat, 2000d (~$30) for about 2-3 hours. Saw some birbs and maybe monkeys pretty far in the trees. Even though it seems like it's close enough, you don't actually reach the National Park from there, so this was maybe not the best place to start boating. Pretty nice relaxing time though.  Lunch was $1.2 for chicken and veggies in this peanut sauce. Pretty drat good.  The ferry across is 10d and 50d for a ghelle-ghelle (shared minibus) to Wassu. Then a pretty long walk to Kuntaur, which is a village on the river just opposite the park. There's a nice lodge there right on the waterfront called Kairoh Garden.   Day 4  I think this area would be the highlight for most people. You've got the Stone Circles nearby (later on that), and here you can do a boat trip, walking tour, and visit the Chimp Rehabilitation Center. The chimps here here are re-introduced from other places because the original population has been murdered, but there are several native generations living here at this point. You can see them on a boat trip, but it's also possible to arrange to actually visit the place and even stay overnight at some lodge. Unfortunately it turned out that you have to arrange it long in advance though some UK company. Anyway, the lodge (marked on the map) can organize the boat trip but they were pretty strict about it being 2 hours whether you see anything or not. If you go out of the compound, there are boats you can hire and they're a bit more flexible, and together with some Germans form the lodge we negotiated 2400d for 4 people. You can see the boats on the drone shot above.     The chimp photo is also from here. A lens longer than 200mm would've been helpful here I think! One of the German guys was a bird nerd and would explain what everything is but that was a bit of  to retain anything.
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Dec 23, 2022 21:24
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edit: welp, somehow between me opening the thread and replying I got the full trip report and photos I wanted. Super cool, thanks for sharing!!
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Dec 23, 2022 21:37
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HookShot posted:edit: welp, somehow between me opening the thread and replying I got the full trip report and photos I wanted. Super cool, thanks for sharing!! Trip report part 2 This was technically the afternoon of the same day. The was also a possible to go for a walking tour of the park as I mentioned before, as I understood directly on the opposite shore, but I thought the scheduling wouldn't work out so moved on.  The town of Kuntaur itself is pretty poor and was the only place where little kids ran up to beg for candy or water. But the area is quite picturesque with lots of canals and rice paddies (not pictures... I was going to get up early to catch the landscape in good light but oops)    The next POI is definitely Wassu, just 30 minutes walk away, which is known for the Wassu Stone Circles. From the Rough Guide: quote:The hardened laterite pillars, clustered in eleven loose rings around burial     It's not a mindblowing site but definitely worth checking out in the area. I think it costs like 100d and has a bathroom which was very handy. Initially I thought I'd move on in the direction of Farafenni (a border town to the North-West) but there was a nice guesthouse ("Reliable Guesthouse") right on the walk back from the stone circles to the main road and I spent the night there instead of Farafenni as I wouldn't want to cross the border at night anyway. Day 5 After a not very early breakfast the owner of the guesthosue drove me to the main road (like 5 minute walk lol) in a 1st gen Toyota Sequoia and put em on a bus to Farafenni, about 90 minutes away. I think it cost about 75d.    As is often the case here, the main road is a kind of a market street. The guidebook makes it sound like it gets pretty wild during the weekly market, but as it was it looked similar to other towns. The border is pretty far away so it's worth taking a taxi and not walking like a dumbass. Though on the other hand you get to look around more. As for the border itself, it's pretty uneventful. It's just an unobstructed road that you could just walk through, but then who knows what would happen if they didn't see the right stamp in your passport later. So as you walk along, there's first the Gambian then Senegalese passport controls. I didn't take pictures in case they'd be jumpy but shockingly there's a fresh streeview photo from the Senegalese side:   https://goo.gl/maps/Vh5DEWhqJkKhpPBN9 They have modern gear with cameras and fingerprint scanners, and ask usual border questions like where you're going and what's your occupation. I was then always asked to come inside the office, but there were no attempts to extract a bribe. They probably just had to look up if I need a visa or something. Nobody asked about vaccinations here (though yellow fever is theoretically mandatory). There's a guy just after the Senegalese checkpoint offering to exchange money at a fairly reasonable rate (600 / 1EUR) The garage is about 500m down the road on the right. As usual there are a bunch of options:
It was 6000CFA or from there to Dakar, the usual bargaining didn't seem to work but I was off within minutes. What I didn't count on though was being sent to the back seat for 4 hours lol. At least we didn't crash because that wouldn't be pretty.  The woman is selling a bag of water, which is very common refreshment. Sadly people tend to throw the bags out of the window. In the BG is the start of the toll highway. The ride was smooth until we got close to Dakar. It's a pretty big city but even then the traffic was loving nightmareish. Like worse than I've seen anywhere in Europe or the US (probably due even more pathetic public transport), and if that wasn't enough, two trucks collided on an offramp just in front of us, but thankfully resolved their differences pretty quickly.  One problem that immediately became clear is that nobody speaks English and my broken French + Google Translate seems to be barely working. I spent like an hour trying to figure out where the car will stop and if they can drop me off relatively near the hotel (marked near Plage BCEAO in the north). Eventually someone got out and a new guy got in, who understood what I wanted, and explained that the woman in front was going in the same direction and we can share a taxi. But I still had no idea where we'll end up. Turns out it's this bus station, and the taxi the woman arranged cost another 4000CFA though I had to talk them down from 5k. The hotel was called Auberge Keur Diame, apparently ran by a Swiss lady as it it turned out, pretty nice but again at like $35 not what I'd expect to be paying for a small room that doesn't even have a private bathroom. Nice breakfast though.  Welp I was hoping I'd get through everything else now but not even close. To avoid spamming the thread I'll just update this post later. mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 22:28 on Dec 26, 2022 |
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Dec 26, 2022 22:23
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Eh, spam away - it’s not like posts are at a premium in this sub! Enjoying the trip report, I’m planning to visit the stone circles one day since they’re a World Heritage site and I’m intending to visit all of them!
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Dec 26, 2022 22:59
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Yeah, that rules, thanks so much for the cool posts!
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Dec 27, 2022 00:50
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Hell yeah! Love this poo poo, thanks for sharing!
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Dec 29, 2022 20:43
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Well all right! I suppose it's really unique enough that it makes sense, I certainly wouldn't be writing up my trip to, like, Paris. So if people are finding it at all interesting, on to Dakar then!  Dakar, probably best known for the Paris-Dakar rally, is a pretty big city, probably of around 2 million and more in the metro area. So it's huge and getting around is problematic because public transport only exists in the form of a handful bus routes and some ghelle-ghelle type minibuses (unfortunately I don't seem to have a photo, they're pretty cool looking), so options are limited and traffic is horrible. It's also not exactly NYC so there's not that much touristy stuff, and the choice of hotels is pretty limited. At least it's cheaper than NYC In any case, some of the main attractions are marked on the map. I also tried to recreate some of the bus routes from memory, they can be used to get closer to your destination where you can then get a taxi. Cost 200-300CFA/ride. There's a girl that sits in a literal cage and gives you a ticket printed by an Android thingie.The area near BCEAO is pretty nice with a few restaurants along the beach. Too bad I arrived very late with only enough CFA to buy some bananas from a store though    Bus stops seem to be occasionally marked but mostly you can tell by the groups of people obviously waiting for something. Many routes terminate around here in the market area downtown, basically putting you within walking distance of the interesting stuff in the south.  Independence Square   Something symbolizing... Senegal hatching and taking off??  The downtown area of course hosts a bunch of government facilities and diplomatic missions. I got chased away from the presidential palace by some guys with guns so I didn't take any pictures there. But it's a pretty nice area.  There's a fancy dive club (as in scuba not drinking) around the bottom marker on the map. They do boat dives for 40EUR including equipment.  https://www.google.com/maps/place/O...4!4d-17.4324066 Farther north you get to the port where you can and should get a ferry to the island, it was an important slave trade spot and is supposedly nie to visit. Unfortunately by the time I got there, I would've arrived on the island after sunset so I had to skip it. So that sucked. Continuing north-west is a train station which is just kind of neat. Seems to have pretty fancy modern trains, but from what I could understand, the line only extends like 40km to the various suburbs.   Farther north yet is The Museum of Black Civilisations, which is supposedly also good. As I was walking from the port though, I got there like 40-30 minutes before closing too. In retrospect I should've just ran through it quickly, as it is, the island and the museum are two things I regret missing. The museum is this fairly new, enormous, Chinese building. Outside the russians were going for the cultural victory thing with traditional dance. Took a lot of restraint not to go over and tell them to gently caress themselves but maybe it's not their fault and in any case there weren't many people interested in watching that.   In the North-West, you've got the world-famous African Renaissance Monument. You can go inside through a museum and all the way up into the dude's head for IIRC.    Farther on the NW cape thing, there's the Embassy of the  of course, and the Western-most point of Continental Africa™. It's pretty far to walk but a taxi will get you there. It's a nice, desolate spot, though you're not supposed to be there officially and it's not very clean unfortunately. But worth going imo.I tried to bust out my drone here but the are was too close to the old airport (visible on the map as an empty spot) and without data on my phone, DJI wouldn't let me bypass it  While I was loving around with the gear, two Spanish girls showed up, took some selfies and we shared a cab back downtown.    Some street photos from the less fancy part of town where I had to move for the hostel as the beach hotel was booked the following day. The last one is the hostel's terrace, which was its only redeeming feature.    I mean other than the sheep that lived downstairs. https://i.imgur.com/C2noc1k.mp4 With sound. Please forgive me for the sin of vertical video. I truly am very ashamed of myself. That's pretty much it for Dakar (this is over a few days). I spent a decent amount just exploring the market areas and downtown but didn't have my camera out most of the time sadly, so I don't have nearly as much street photography as I'd like. Other than missing the slave island, I'm pretty satisfied with this diversion though. The last day I got a taxi to the same bus stop (around 3000CFA through an uber-type app, the driver was an IT guy that spoke English just making extra cash lol), you have to look for where the sept place are all parked, around here I'm pretty sure:  They're lined up according to the destination, there were even signs for them on the posts that I didn't see initially. Or you can just say Gambia and they'll direct you to it anyway though. They wanted 6000CFA for the ride and 500 extra for my single backpack, again didn't budge on that at all... I'm beginning to suspect the prices are actually fixed per destination and they aren't just loving with tourists Toubacouta I got off near Toubacouta, a coastal village about 20km from the border, as several people told me it's nice and I didn't want to spend the whole day traveling. Met some wild baboons on the way. https://i.imgur.com/mo0FwTw.mp4 That day Sengal was playing England in the WC and people were pretty hyped about it. Someone asked me if I was English, and when I reassured them that I was not, what I thought of their chances. I said they can definitely win because England sucks, but Senegal lost 3-0 I think, so it was a bummer.      I stayed at a guesthouse called La Kora, it was nice and included breakfast. Around $25. The people were right and it's a nice place to chill out for a day or two. If I had any extra CFA left I might've done a boat trip, but anyway I think it'd be pretty similar to Gambia just 20km down. So the last 500 went towards a minibus ride to the Gambian border.  Safety third, of course! The border experience was exactly the same but in the opposite order and, as I mentioned, the Senegalese guy asked me about the yellow fever vaccination on departure. If I didn't have it, the "fee" would be 5000CFA, but waving a vaccination booklet (which didn't list the YF) was enough as he didn't bother looking through it. Again, no covid stuff. Welp that's it, all of Senegal in one post! It's a country roughly the size of Poland so of course I haven't "seen" Senegal but I think it's a decent sampler. As interesting as it is, the competition is pretty stiff and I doubt I'd come back specifically to Senegal any time soon, if ever, so I think it was worth taking those 4-5 days to check it out. E: fixed one duplicate photo mobby_6kl fucked around with this message at 10:13 on Dec 30, 2022 |
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Dec 29, 2022 23:39
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Thanks for the writeups. Senegal has always vaguely been on my "to check out" list if I’m in the area, but I also expect to spend the rest of my life not actually ever being in the area (except I guess maybe Cap-Vert, but it’s not really convenient). I guess when I’m old and retired maybe I’ll finally do an over lander trip. I’ve done a bunch of legs of overland trips, but by rental cars it’s always impossible to cross the border so I end up looping back. I have a couple different French friends who have gone on holiday to Senegal, but the only thing I remember about their trips is that those two friends both happen to have similar photography skills to your average five year old. I didn’t know you needed data to bypass DJI warnings! One thing I’m bummed about is how crazy North African countries (and Arab countries in general) are about drones. Tunisia has had it on their agenda to legalize drones since like… 2017, yet unsurprisingly nothing ever advances. In Lebanon I chanced it and flew everywhere in the Christian and Druze areas, but I would way be more wary of trying that in somewhere that wasn’t a failed state in thrall to the country of my passport where I could have something worse than confiscation happen to me.
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Dec 30, 2022 04:39
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That absolutely rules, thanks for sharing!
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Dec 30, 2022 05:30
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Saladman posted:Thanks for the writeups. Senegal has always vaguely been on my "to check out" list if I’m in the area, but I also expect to spend the rest of my life not actually ever being in the area (except I guess maybe Cap-Vert, but it’s not really convenient). I guess when I’m old and retired maybe I’ll finally do an over lander trip. I’ve done a bunch of legs of overland trips, but by rental cars it’s always impossible to cross the border so I end up looping back. I have a couple different French friends who have gone on holiday to Senegal, but the only thing I remember about their trips is that those two friends both happen to have similar photography skills to your average five year old. Cape Verde is pretty popular resort destination though, I keep seeing all-inclusive trips for like $500/person. I do see direct flights to/from Dakar for around $300 in 1.5 hours or so. I don't know where you're located but that could be worth making a hop to check it out. Flying from Lisbon is ~4 hours.There might be a ferry/boat option too. There's also a ferry from Dakar to the south of Senegal, probably to Ziguinchor I think? If I had more time, I would've done that and then continued to Gambia from there. It's in a weird position where it's "interesting" but not something you'd make plans to visit because there's always something ahead in the list. So it was a coincidence that TAP did a sale before I found anything else to do this winter I think overlanding could be a great option though, it's something I wanted to do as well. Maybe even in my POS rally car to up the excitement. Although you can get almost anywhere by bush taxi or hiring a car, just having your own transportation hugely simplifies everything tremendously. I considered renting a car there, and in Dakar it doesn't seem to be a problem ($200/week for a Yaris) in Gambia it's much more limited and they still won't let you cross the border as you say.As for the drone, I think that's what happened? I live near an airport too so I could go test it later. But I believe normally it'll tell you about the restricted area and you can press "I take responsibility" or something and it'll let you fly anyway. But then it said something about not being able to connect and didn't let me continue. Maybe it sends your coordinates to the FAA/CIA? It sucks that the Arab countries are so anal about drones yeah. I had to leave it at home once because Egypt will even confiscate it at border entry I believe. And yet you have so much space to safely fly them  HookShot posted:That absolutely rules, thanks for sharing!  Creative writing isn't exactly my thing but hopefully this gets the general vibes across. I have a bunch of videos I'll need to edit together at some point but 
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Dec 30, 2022 10:57
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Oh, funny. I had to look on my phone to remember how to spell the country since I always forget what language it’s supposed to be formally spelled in (Côte d’Ivoire style) and it’s Cap-Vert on my google maps, which is in French. I wonder if some 18th century sailors got hosed up by going to Cap-Vert instead of Cap-Vert, like those people who end up in Granada instead of Grenada.
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Dec 30, 2022 16:21
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Saladman posted:Oh, funny. I had to look on my phone to remember how to spell the country since I always forget what language it’s supposed to be formally spelled in (Côte d’Ivoire style) and it’s Cap-Vert on my google maps, which is in French. I wonder if some 18th century sailors got hosed up by going to Cap-Vert instead of Cap-Vert, like those people who end up in Granada instead of Grenada. So that wasn't just to be a pedantic rear end in a top hat.It is indeed the French name, and you can always count on them making a mess I guess. And also there's the Portuguese name: quote:Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cape Verde or Republic of Cabo Verde 
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Dec 30, 2022 19:27
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Algerian visa documents deposited yesterday. I will have to go back in person in 3 weeks and pick it up, apparently. It looks like some consulates will mail the passports back, others not. Anyway, only a 4 hour public transport or 2.5 hour drive each way... and at least I'm not in the US or some huge country where I'd be obliged to fly out to the nearest consulate in person once. Assuming that works out, I guess we'll follow-up here with a trip report of (a small section of) the biggest country in Africa, perhaps a fitting follow-up to mobby's post about the smallest country in Africa. Our plan is to spend one week in Tassili N'Ajjer at the Libya-Niger-Algeria tripoint on an organized tour, and then two weeks driving around the north between Algiers and Annaba just the two of us. VVV: Cool, didn't expect more posts. Saladman fucked around with this message at 16:27 on Jan 8, 2023 |
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Jan 7, 2023 21:53
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I was hoping to finish it in this post but there will be one more part, it seems. So once across the border, the situation is about the same as usual, street vendors, exchange guys, etc. Not much to do but move on. A taxi driver offered a ride to Barra on the way to the garage and I decided to splurge an extra $1 for a ride in a Mercedes with rich Corinthian leather upholstery and Spiderman theme windshield decorations   Barra is about 20km and two police checkpoints away, the driver crammed 4 people into the back seat on the way there, but gets me right to the ferry terminal. Tickets are sold through a window on its corner, 10d. You can also take a small boat if you go right behind the terminal, which is what I wanted to do as it would be fun (and dangerous). But as the ferry was just loading, nobody wanted to take those boats so I would've had to wait way too long. On the ferry, lots of NGO vehicles and a bunch of tourists on board. Women walked around selling bananas and nuts, so you could have a snack on the way, because while the crossing doesn't look huge, it takes about an hour.    The other big ship to the right of the ferry is Koray Bey, a floating power plant capable of 36MW output and supplying up to 60% of the Gambia's electricity (at least as they're claiming: https://karpowership.com/en/gambia). That seems kind of nuts to me, both the one ship making up 60% of electricity and that 36MW is enough to supply most of the country. Lithuania has a similar population and is using 1.6GW now. During the whole trip there was only one instance when the electricity was out though so I guess it's working. The capital is nothing like Dakar, it's got small town feel because it is one, and is rather unremarkable overall. I got some shawerma for lunch from a place called "Shawerma King" and tried to top up my data credit at an Africell store, but they needed the account pin (not the card pin) that the guy who set it up didn't give me. Oh well, no data for me.    There's a big market stretching all the way from the ferry to the July 22 square (above), which is fun to walk around, lots of fabrics, cloths and various random crap. The northern coast has some beach resorts. There was supposed to be a National Museum that I somehow missed on the way. Looking at it on the map, it seems like a tiny building that I probably just overlooked. There's a "Taxi stand to Bakau" marked on Google Maps, where I'm sure you can get a taxi, but no usual garage that I could see. Eventually a local version of a sept-place, a way more modern Opel, pulled over on the way to Westfield. 15d. Another ghelle-ghelle ride went into the direction of Bakau, that's the northern tip of the southern bank on the map above. There's a bunch of stuff there that I haven't seen in first days, like the Kachikally Crocodile Pool, the Botanical Garden, a craft market, and some chill bars. I got off at the closest point to the crocodile pool and walked like 15 minutes through what felt like a middle class (by local standards) area.    The crocodile pool is a small park with a pond full of crocodiles that they let you touch under supervision. It's not large but worth a visit especially if you haven't seen crocs up close. I've been to a gator park in Florida so they felt like good buddies. Entrance is 100d, and they ask for a donation inside. Pretty close outside is a small shack where that guy makes these prints/paintings? I got a few as something to hand out as souvenirs, around 200d/each for a smaller ones.  By the time I got out of the neighborhood, it starting to get pretty late, or at least close to the sunset which was around 7pm. I don't think it's dangerous to be outside or anything, there just isn't much to do outside once it's dark as most streets don't even have any lighting and shops and attractions start to close. So now is probably a good time to address how the "public transport" works in practice more detail. The Ghelle-Ghelle The route taxi minivans are called "ghelle-ghelle" in the guidebook (and nowhere else apparently) so that's what I called them and people seemed to understand. The vehicle themselves are minivans like the Transit or Sprinter mostly from the 90s it seems, in various states of disrepair, so they're easy to identify in traffic. However, they're not marked with a route number, destination or direction. Usually a teenager sitting at the sliding door will shout the destination if they have room to cram in one more person. Or you can also pull them over by sticking out your hand (without the thumb) and asking them. Unless you're going to a small village or a distant town, they're almost never going to where you need to go, but instead one of the many "garages" that are all over the place, so you need to know where they're located and if going there will help you. For example, there's no direct connection to get from Bakau to the area of Camping Sukuta Lodge, and your best bet is Wesfield, one of the garages I've managed to identify:  So on the main street in Bakau you wait and shout "Westfield" at passing vans until one pulls over. It drops you off somewhere between the DHL and Westfield marker on the map. It's a very busy hub with dozens of vans loading/unloading, but when I asked for directions, I was told to go around 300m to the roundabout marked as Westfield and ask for Tippa Garage. Tippa garage is yet another hub, and nowhere near where I actually need to go. But anyway, I go there and ask some girls who are clearly waiting for something if that's the right place. Turns out they're also going to Tippa garage and we try catch something together for like 10 minutes, but mostly the cars are full or aren't going there. Enter the yellow 3-row tuktuk. We get in (on?) and almost immediately realize that we're stuck in horrendous traffic. Luckily it's a tuktuk and so the driver doesn't gently caress around and passes everyone on what is essentially combination shoulder/sidewalk. With sound: https://i.imgur.com/QNmeqmx.mp4 Yep. At one of the intersections there's a police officer directing traffic and she's not very amused. She (probably) tells him to pull over after the intersection but he decides to gun instead. Which isn't a great idea because, well, we immediately get stuck in traffic lol. You can see the driver looking around to see if we lost the coppers but she's somehow right there already. He does pull over this time and we have to get off without even reaching Tippa Garage and walk the rest of the way. The story basically repeats there, the girls are still going in the same direction so we wait for the right van and get in. Unfortunately at this time I didn't know about the Turntable garage, so it was a bit tricky to find out if it'll drive right past the campsite or take a different road. The traffic is still terrible this entire time and we're barely moving faster than walking. Including another 15 minute walk, this whole ~10km trip from Bakau took like 2.5 hours
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Jan 8, 2023 16:25
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Well, within the last two weeks, Algeria has massively liberalized its visa scheme, even allowing visa-on-arrival for people who have booked a package tour. (Well, the tour company has to ask for it, but it's a 48 hour turnaround time and for the person on the package tour, trivial.) Algeria will apparently also shortly implement a greatly expedited normal tourist visa for people not on package tours, so I guess I get to be one of the last to go through this huge hassle of a system. This was announced shortly before COVID, so it has been expected for a long time, but "shortly / soon" in North Africa doesn't mean very much. Tunisia was supposed to "shortly" permit personal use of drones since like, 2018*. Tassili N'Ajjer also made it onto the NYTimes list of "52 places for 2023", and Algeria just resumed direct flights to Tassili from Paris for the first time since the 2003 kidnappings there spurred decades of insecurity for travellers in the Sahara. The last kidnapping in Algeira was in 2011, and then there was the terrorist attack on In Amenas in mid-Jan 2013, with nothing then in the last 10 years, so the government has been much happier to let tourists go there again now, post-COVID. Despite that huge change, there is still one official "no go" area in Algeria -- the Hoggar is almost entirely off limits and the small part that is not off limits is very restricted. There's also informally some of the mountains in the Kabylie area that are apparently sketchy. One of my Kabylie employees tells me that it's fine now as long as we don't go hiking into random woods and stumble across drug farms, and that people will be nicer to us than they are to Arab Algerians. Also that we should speak try to speak French first instead of Darja to people in the Kabylie areas, which is interesting. I remember getting her CV a couple years ago and thinking it was odd that she did not put "Arabic" as a language spoken on it (but did include Kabylie) as she was born and raised near Bejaia and would obviously speak Darja and Arabic. That turned out to be a very specific political decision and it was not about Europeans being racist against seeing "Arabic" on a CV, but rather like someone born and raised in Montreal might only put French on their "languages spoken" despite speaking fluent English. * lol Tunisia drones, progress in 2022: "Certes, 2022 sera une année transitoire pour l’utilisation des drones en Tunisie ; dans les prochaines semaines, le ministère du Transport devrait publier le projet du décret présidentiel relatif à l’utilisation des drones." (Feb 2022, "2022 will be a transitionary year for using drones in Tunisia, in the next weeks the minister of transport will publish the new presidential decree on [the liberalization of use of] drones") followed by this post 8 months later "A l’occasion du démarrage du Salon international de l’aéronautique et de la défense à Enfidha ce mercredi 12 octobre 2022, le ministre du Transport, Rabii El Majidi, a déclaré que son ministère est en train d’élaborer un projet de loi relatif à l’organisation de l’utilisation de drones en Tunisie." lmao, like every six months there's some minister talking about how the minister of transport is "making progress for a new law regarding the use of drones in Tunisia". yeah he probably formatted a document in Word and titled it "New Law For Drones - 20XX" and the rest of the page is just totally blank. Saladman fucked around with this message at 11:52 on Jan 26, 2023 |
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Jan 13, 2023 11:53
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Got my visa for Algeria today, which got approved after something like 10 business days of processing time, exactly as they said when I dropped off the application. Everything was very much on time and efficient, I didn’t spend more than 5 minutes in the consulate either time. A guy in front of my deposited his passport for a tourist visa and was told he could get it back this afternoon; not sure if my 10 days is because I’m a US passport holder, or if that visa liberalization that just hit in the last two weeks also means consulates can now directly issue tourist visas without having to contact Algiers. If it’s a half day turnaround generally, that would be huge… or if the entire process could be done by mail, which maybe is the case for the US and larger countries, but not here — I asked, albeit a couple months ago. I got a 22 day single entry visa, corresponding exactly to the dates of the hotel stays and plane ticket I printed out. Presumably I won’t be arrested if Air Algiers delays my flight back by a day. All in all if that’s one of the "worlds hardest visas" to get, it just means you have to like, be able to read and be able to print out a handful of simple documents that you already have copies of at home. Possibly the reason it’s on those lists is because of World Traveller Bloggers, and Algeria is particularly strict that you can only apply for a visa in your country of residence, country of citizenship, or specifically assigned third countries in case you live in a country without an Algerian embassy/consulate. Not sure how it works in countries like the UK; if you lived in Edinburgh and had to go to London to do the process in person that would be a nightmare. Thank god for small countries, even if the consulate is out in the furthest corner from anything (Geneva). Anyway now that you can get a VoA if you’re booked with a tour operator, that will no doubt massively increase Algerian tourism from "basically none" all the way up to "very few". The like literally three Algerian tourist operating companies with a social media presence more modern than a listing in a 15 year old French language guidebook are going to make a killing.
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Jan 26, 2023 11:34
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Glad it went smoothly! I've no experience with Algerian visas but the worst have been the US and Canada. Just a shitload of documents, proof of income, interviews, personal details of people you're visiting, etc. I imagine it's the same in EU countries for someone from developing countries. Really curious about your trip, I really don't know much about the present situation or even what's there to do, but given an opportunity I'd certainly go check it out as well. Please keep posting Also oops just realized I haven't finished the trip reports. One day I'll get to it!
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Jan 26, 2023 14:21
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