Banjul, Gambia

March 30, 2023

Good Morning, Early this morning we coasted into Banjul, GambiaOn our way in, we noticed another one of the so called power ships moored near the shore. We’ve seen those ships now in several of our last stops. These ships are often supplied by a gas line or the ships have LNG on board to power the generators. They often also have solar panels on board. These ships supply power to shore.This morning we planned to go on a tour to see the highlights of Banjul. By 9:30 we boarded the bus. The City of Banjul is build on a island connected with a causeway to the sister city’s Bakau and Serrekunda.The bus was going to take us to Serrekunda first, to show us a real African market. It was a good decision from the tour operator, not to let us out of the bus but just do a drive by instead. We would’ve for sure lost some of the older passengers in the very dense populated market. This market wasn’t a tourist market, but an everyday real Afrikan market. They would sell everything from shovel, rakes, kitchenwares, fruit and big hunks of meat covered with flies  hanging down from rafters outside the stores. Apparently the market is packed with people everyday. Because people go out to buy fresh food everyday, most residences lack cooling facilities like  fridges. After passing through this market, we stopped briefly at a small craft market. (not my cup of tea)Our next stop was at a Crocodile farm. The street to the farm was to narrow for our large bus, they transported us to the farm in mini vans. We toured the farm, lots of Crocs out there, most were deep a sleep,  apparently they were recently fed I was told. I noticed there were a lot of chickens running around on the farm. My guess is they are likely part of a future Crocodile lunch. While we were waiting for the passengers to come back to the bus pickup, we shopped a bit waiting for everyone to arrive. Carol managed to buy some linnen after some serious haggling about the price. The end result was that the buyer and vendor were happy with the sale. There was an open channel raw sewer  running right beside the road, very smelly in this heat. After all getting back on the bus, we were on route to a stop at an nice hotel (Tropic Garden Hotel) on the beach for a cold drink. This was a beautiful hotel at the beach. An hotel with a beautiful pool and a impressive set of stairs leading to a sandy beach.We were served a nice ice cold beer here. I talked to a police lady here, who was riding on one of the buses for security, she was getting quite hungry. She was fasting as part of Ramadan. In Gambia 90% of the population is Muslim and 10% Christian. After our refreshment we carried on with our tour and made a brief stop at a museum, not to much to see here, just the attendent yelling no pictures unless you paid him two bucks, then you could take as many pictures as you liked. The last stop was at a place were they were selling jewellery. The place was about 15ftx15ft, Very interesting trying to get sixty people through the door, many of them with walkers. (doesn’t work well) At last we continued on with our last segment of the tour back to the ship. By this time we were quite hungry, as we hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Now I realised how the police agent lady I mentioned earlier must been feeling by now.The remaining of the afternoon I made some necessary phone calls and paid bills. Tomorrows port is scheduled to be Dakar, Senegal 

Cheers