I graduated!

My aunt Meriel, my gran, me and my mum celebrating my MSc graduation :)

Last day in the Gambia

Maz and I with our wonderful taxi driver Pappe Jazz

Crossing the Gambia & Senegal

Sunrise on the Gambian River

Leaving the ferry on the farside of the river

Sunburned but smiling

We packed so much into the past few days that it's gone by in a total blur. On Sunday we walked round the Abuko nature reserve - before we walked in our taxi driver asked if we wanted him to drive round to the exit to pick us up or if we wanted to walk back to the entrance - we foolishly told him we were perfectly capapble fo walking back and set off. Gambia is really famous for the variety of birds here, and we saw some really beautiful ones, but were much more impressed by the massive crocodiles along the banks. At about the 33rd marker I started to feel a bit tired and asked our guide how much further the walk was - he laughed and said there were 107 markers till the end! We kept going and at about the 1/2 way point stopped at the animal rehab house, had a drink and snapped a few pics of the alarmingly close hyena family. The last 1/2 I walked fast to reach the end as soon as possible, and have never been so happy as to see our taxi driver waiting patiently for us. Maz and I jumped in and were happy to be off when we were told the Nigerian president was about to pass and we couldn't leave until he had done so... about 20 minutes later a parade of cars filed past and we were finally on our way.

We met up with the Gambian family of one of Maz'z coworkers on Sunday evening and they have been taking brilliant care of us - guiding us to places we never would have found on our own, explaining the country from a locals point of view and even feeding us a wonderful Gambian dinner of fish, plassus and rice last night. They live so far away from where we are staying on the coast that it took a couple of hours by gellah-gellah to get back last night, but it was a much more relaxing trip than the dalla-dallas of Tanzania (for a start everyone had their own seat!).

Today I decided to take a break from all the hectic site-seeing to spend some time on the beach and am decidedly pink as a result!

Future football stars

Children in the Gambia

The family that made us feel welcome in the Gambia

Just as close as they appear

Gambia Maybe Time

Hello from hot and sunny Kotu Beach, the Gambia. Maz and I left the absolutely freezing streets of London yesterday morning thinking it wouldn't be possible to survive in temperatures any colder and spent the evening walking a long the beach barefoot. The cold that I had when I left England has almost dissappeared with the warm weather.

We had heard quite a lot about sex tourism here before we came (as has just about everyone it seems!), though watching the middle age women with boys 1/2 their age is a sight that can only really be seen to be believed. Thanks to this wonderful practice, we've found it completely impossible to walk anywhere unaccompanied by 'bumsters' who seem harmless but are rather irritating. This morning we went to the markets in Serrekundu (the largest city in the Gambia) and spent an hour or so walking round with a constant companion telling us "relax and take it easy, I'm not hassling you," If that is so, I dread to think what hassling is!

Now that we've missed the peak sun hours, we'll spent the afternoon lounging on the beach and relaxing :)

The Western Sahara by air