Too-baabs up the river

Since our last entry, sarahs toe has healed and jers flu went away (after one night of 102 temp). So the Hartmoores are back in action.

We said good bye to our traveling companions mark (brit) and chris (azzie) who headed up country which means up the river (east).

We had been traveling with them for about a week and shared the sweet appartment for 3 days where we could cook and watch tv in english...very nice

Infact the last day we were lucky to watch the worst movie EVER on HBO at the apartment: '3000 miles to grace land'...check it out some time...stupid kevin costner wasted 2 hours of our lives (actually i was smart and skipped out about one hour into it...ha)

Since those guys left us, we checked out and sarah and i switched hotels. We moved to the African Village Hotel in Bakao which is also on the atlantic coast.

This time we found another nice place with pool, swim up bar, nice view of the ocean and a ping pong table (which we never actually used).

The actual room is OK cause it has AC and a frige and a little kitchen...better than the cave in hermosa at least.

So we stayed there 3 days mostly going for walks, hanging out at the beach and pool and getting 'bumstered' any time we left the hotel.

Getting bumstered means when you leave, guys come up to talk to you and try to get you into a shop, or into a resturaunt, or go for a tour of the city, or into a cab where they get a commmission. if that dosent work, they try to get you to buy them a beer, or a smoke, or a coke.

if that dosent work, they ask for your shirt or glasses or watch or thongs or money

if that dosent work, they walk with you and try to be annoying enough that most people give them money to get rid of them...

so we pretty much spent about 1/2 hour to 1 hour a day getting bumstered...but the rest of the time was great.

After 6 days total on the atlantic coast, we finally headed up river to Tendaba Camp. An encampment made up of little round thatched huts on the river next to a little fishing village.

We got there in about 4 hours (to go 100 miles) on the public busses. it takes a long time cause the roads are in really bad shape. The bus drivers actually drive on the dirt next to the road to avoid driving on the road. About the worst we have seen in any country.

But we made it to the dirt road that leads to the camp 5km away. We hitched a ride on a donkey cart which was an awesome ride. It was nice and quite with the clop clop of the horse with great green land scape...awesome.

They had 2 conventions going on at the camp (which slept like 150 people).

one was on AIDS sponsered by the gov of gambia and one was on management sponsered by some africa improvement society.

It was good to talk to these people who were not out for you money and just interested in talking to you. So after 2 nights, a couple great walks in the country side, a small safari (no animals spotted) and a boat tour which was really nice, we headed back to the coast because we left behind an integral member of our company: our stuffed dog 'snoop' rar! rar! rar!...WHO YOU CALLIN CRAZY!! man these malaria pills are startin to the to me...

dont worry, we found him at the hotel we stayed at before and he is ok.

so we are back on the coast for 2 nights and tomorrow we head up river again to gorgetown...about 6 hours (150 miles) by bus

wish us luck