Love Love Love.... cant stop Loving it....

TIA

One can never really understand this term until you’ve actually experienced Africa. In all its beauty, white sanded beaches and clear sea’s, rambling mountains, ebony skinned, thick haired beauties and languages that steal hearts in the meanest of words, there are still instances that occur that remind you of exactly where in the world you are at that particular point in time.
My December vacation started with a 30 hour fling into the awesome scenery that the Senegalese shores boast and absolutely beautiful weather that can’t really be found anywhere else but right here in Africa. Unfortunately we were fully equipped for the freezing -2 deg temperatures in New York which is where we would eventually spend the latter part of our trip.
The skies are pitch black as flight SA 203 lands in the city of Dakar at approximately 2am, Eastern standard time, we are expecting to simply off load passengers who are ending their travels in this city, which also happens to be hosting a music festival with numerous artists from around the continent. As these passengers disembark, we are greeted by the captain and assured that our stop over should not last for more than an hour and that we would soon be back in the air continuing our journey to New York City. A couple of minutes later the captains voice calmly sounds through the planes intercom system again, it was at this point that our hopes of reaching the city of dreams in the next 9 hours are completely shattered, as we are informed that the weather in New York has forced JFK International airport to completely shut down as the blizzard has compacted between 61cm to 80cm of snow onto the runways bringing all aviation activity to a halt.

Inside Dakar- Yeoff Leopold Sedar Senghor International Airport, the red leather couches, heavy dark wood furniture complete with perfume sales counter and the fern pot plants in the business class lounge all bring back nostalgic memories of a Sun International hotel in Swaziland that had been designed and decorated back in the 70’s. The brightly lit Christmas tree and tinsel trimmings around the lounge is a little reminder that we celebrated Christmas only yesterday. There is a strong scent of some cheap perfume that is lingering in the air, which I suppose is far better than the scent of unwashed armpits that accosted us as we entered the airport downstairs, reminded me of being at a border on a hot African afternoon. None the less we were fortunate enough not to have to deal with that invasive odour for much longer than a few minutes, instead we spent the next 10 hours of trip curled up on the comfortable red leather sofa’s, breezing in and out of sleep. The technological savior which is wireless was an absolute joy as it enabled us to at least keep in touch with the rest of the world but even this wasn’t really effective because most of our world, back in SA, was asleep at his time.
Eventually, after we were ipoded, laptoped, twittered and facebooked out we were shuttled to Le Meridian Hotel (without having our passports stamped mind you). The minute we got outside of the airport building we were bombarded by people trying to sell CAF Franc (Senegalese currency) unperturbed by the police who stood around nonchalantly. There was an assortment of buses, taxi’s and of course people, some just standing around, some trying to make sales of one thing or another. I couldn’t be sure if we were still at the airport, a taxi rank, a bus terminal or a market… it didn’t really matter because this right here, is Africa.

As we drove through the dusty streets of the city, the constant road works and construction all the way from the airport to the hotel made it very clear that this country is in the process of much development.



Le meridian was like an oasis in the desert with its green lawns, palm tree’s and air conditioned buildings. Finally we could take a nap on a bed, take a shower and have a meal at les Jardins del’ Ocean restaurant with a really fantastic view of the ocean. Such a pity I didn’t pack my swim suit… I love this 5 Star Africa…



So being in Senegal 'illegally', our experience of it didn’t go much further than the bus and the hotel. Under different circumstances I’m pretty sure we would thoroughly have enjoyed the city especially because there was this awesome (or so it seemed) music festival happening. Unfortunately I spent most of my time there wanting to leave, even more so when we got back to the airport about 14 hours later to deal with having to fit ourselves onto an airplane travelling to Washington instead of New York (compliments of SAA and the incompetent ground staff in Johannesburg). Eventually at about 5am the Washington bound flight took off and we said goodbye to Senegal, without a clue of how we would make our way to New York once we had landed…