A day at the beach

Apparently we haven't adjusted to Dakar time quite yet, so much to our surprise we woke up at 12:30pm for the second day in a row. Our French classes don't start until Wednesday, so we decided to spend the day at the beach...talking only to ourselves.

Despite being a peninsula, Dakar isn't known for it's beaches. So, we headed to the northern village of N'Gor, to swim at the Plage N'Gor, after a quick little jaunt to the Ile de N'Gor. [The pattern should be obvious.]

Now, I usually feel pale when I'm at the beach, but today it was especially true. The Plage N'Gor is a small beach full of Dakarois, notably teenagers looking to get all smoochy-faced with their boos. Except for two other Europeans, we were by far the oldest (and whitest) people for miles. Fortunately the goats nor the children playing soccer seemed to mind.

We took a long wooden motor canoe, a pirogue, to the Ile where we walked through narrow walled streets and after five minutes found ourselves at the end of the loop, back to where we began, and walked right into an open air restaurant. Almost every menu has several fish options and most are accompanied with an incredible tomato-onion sauce. We ordered the grilled shrimp sandwich with said sauce on fresh French bread. Delish.

We call this "goats and boats"

There are fewer things that I enjoy than taking a rickety hand-painted boat ride in the developing world, and today was no exception.

Dakar is treating us well, and we're having a blast.