… may not be a rose after all. At least that’s the case of La Lac Rose, a salt water lake about an hour north of Dakar. We were drawn to La Lac Rose upon promises, by the guide books, websites and tourist agencies around town, that we would see a beautiful lake that glistened pink under the Senegalese sun. Not quite. La Lac Rose is a pretty lake, but we just weren’t seeing the pink. An orangish-brown, maybe. Not pink.
From the time we got out of the car, we were accosted by an endless string of people wanting to be our guide, or to sell us something. It must be low tourist season, as we were the only ones around. We finally shook them, walked away from the main tourist area and went next door, past a resting herd of camels and a tout with a monkey, to find a tranquil hotel tucked away behind all the tourist oriented madness. No touts, no guides. It did have an open air restaurant with a lake view, a gazebo perched on stilts just at the edge of the water. With the price of lunch came the privilege of enjoying the calm, swimming off their shoreline, and relaxing under the shade of a thatch roof veranda, watching the birds and lizards go by. Floating in the lake was bliss – no effort required, as the salt content is 10x of the ocean. (A bit tingly, though. Ladies, don’t shave your legs the morning of a visit to a salt lake!) Our driver came to get us just as our dessert had arrived. We quickly ate our crepes and fruit, showered off the salt and changed, and left this little oasis to return to the madness of Dakar.
The ride to La Lac Rose (and back) made the trip quite an adventure. A modern highway leaving Dakar quickly turned into a more rural route with an endless chain of attractions along the side of the road… roadside markets, with throngs of locals buying everyday wares; beautifully and brightly dressed women carrying loads of food, or other items on their heads (I even saw one woman with a kerosene tank on her head!); goats, goats, and more goats; donkey carts riding side by side with busses and motorcycles; and it goes on… Then the road turned to countryside, then the road turned to barely no road at all… you could tell it once was a road, with a strip of asphalt down the middle, now almost totally obscured by sand and dirt. The taxi driver chose, wisely, to avoid that part and just stick to impromptu off-roading, following the dirt berm most of the way. Then we went through a few small towns/villages, sharing the ever narrowing road with children playing soccer, more women carrying even larger loads on their heads, donkey and horse carts, and, of course, goats.
After a dinner of middle eastern mezes (seems to be popular around here), Laura and I returned to the hotel to pack our bags. Tomorrow we head to Mali, to begin our trip to Timbuktu.
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