2025 Western Africa

Scott and I start a Western Africa cruise on Friday, December 19, starting in Barcelona, Spain and ending in Cape Town, South Africa, this is a 26-day, 25-night cruise and the cruise will end January 13, 2016.

I left New York on Wednesday, December 17 and flew to Barcelona where I met up with Scott at the Barcelona airport on Thursday morning (18th), he’s flying from Los Angeles.

On Thursday our first night in Barcelona before we board our cruise ship we will be staying at the Grums Hotel & Spa, a 4-stars hotel located in one of the most emblematic and central zones of the city.  The location is within walking distance to several attractions and close to the cruise port.  Once we feel confident about the weather and any flight delays, we'll try and do something interesting near the hotel.

Our cruise ship is the Seven Seas Voyager.  The Seven Seas Voyager is considered a small, luxury cruise ship, carrying only around 700 guests, making it intimate and exclusive.  The Voyager is a sister ship to the Seven Seas Mariner that Scott and I were on for our Easter Island & French Polynesia cruise in February of this year.  See the following Voyager photo lifted from the Seven Seas Internet site, this attachment also shows the location of our cabin on Deck 7, starboard side.

The 13 cruise key Ports of Call will be (and see the following map):

Barcelona (where we start the cruise) & then Cadiz, in Spain

Lanzarote & Tenerife, in the Canary Islands (part of Spain)

Mindelo, in Cape Verde

Dakar, in Senegal

Banjul, in Gambia

Abidjan, in Ivory Coast

Sekondi-Takoradi, in Ghana

Lomé, in Togo

São Tomé, in São Tomé & Príncipe

Walvis Bay, in Namibia

Cape Town, in South Africa (where we end the cruise)

We won’t be returning to the USA until January 24 as following the cruise we will be taking some very cool tours in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Botswana.  We will spend several days in Kruger National Park, and then later a helicopter ride over Victoria Falls, following that we will tour the Chobe National Park and the Okavango Delta.

Note:  I prepared the above email a few days ago, ...before I hurt myself, and now I can’t use my right hand much, so this trip will be a challenge.  See photo below.  I just figured out how to dictate my Gmail's. I'm so excited.

This is the story on my hand, the Saturday at 4:30 before I left NY for Spain. I was on my way to happy hour and I also was delivering a Christmas present and was in a hurry cause I didn’t wanna be late. I was racing across 13th St. and tripped on the sidewalk and took a spill. I initially ignored the fact that my right hand baby finger was crooked, but ultimately I went to the orthopedic intensive clinic and they put my hand in a cast.  I also had a big wound on my head and my knee so I’m a bit of a wreck now

I don’t have much use of my right hand and my left hand is really clumsy.  I’m dictating with my iPhone so I may have some typos.

Thursday, December 18

Met up with Scott at the Barcelona airport.  We stayed tonight in Barcelona at the Grums Hotel & Spa.

Friday, December 19 (Barcelona)

Due to my right injured hand I’m using the iPhone’s voice-to-text (called Dictation), which lets you speak words and have them typed out.  It’s working out pretty good, I make corrections on my iPhone as best as I can, but I’m sure I don’t catch them all.

In Barcelona Scott and I stopped sleeping long enough to go for a short walk to the pharmacy and down by the harbor.  On our walk we saw the following funny looking trees, they are called silk floss trees, and are native to South America.  The ones we saw were a gift from Argentina.  The bottle-like trunk is used to store water.  In their native Argentina, the tree is known as "Palo Boracho," which literally translates to "drunken stick," a reference to its swollen, bottle-like trunk that sometimes tends to lean to one side.

We were trying to go see a Sorolla exhibit but just kind of ran out of gas, but on the way we saw the Christopher Columbus statue at the bottom of La Rambla, a tree-lined pedestrian boulevard.  The statue was built for the 1888 Universal Exposition to honor Columbus's triumphant return from the Americas after his first voyage.  The statue is marking the spot where Columbus came ashore and met the monarchs.  In the statue Columbus is pointing out to sea somewhere, the pointing direction is debated I think.  Maybe he's saying something like “Oh I can see America from here” or maybe he’s pointing to the large Columbus statue in the center of Columbus Circle in Manhattan? 🙂    

A fun fact:  The Barcelona monument is 131 feet tall, while the Manhattan monument is only 76 feet tall.

Our ship departed Barcelona around 7 pm.

Saturday, December 20 (Sea Day)

Currently Scott and I are sailing in the Mediterranean Sea, but there has been nothing to report other than just the trials and tribulations of jet lag plus dealing with life with only one hand.

Somewhere along here we received the following message from the ship, “…during a portion of our voyage we will be sailing through an area where enhanced security measures are a standard practice designed to ensure the safety and peace of mind of all of our guests and crew. Please be rest assured these precautions are routinely implemented to provide an additional day of care during your journey. We will be dimming all open deck lights, and temporarily shutting off the funnel light, at night we will have additional security personnel on board while in this region...”  Shades of the Somalia, right?

The last time Scott and I were in the Mediterranean Sea was earlier this year when we did the 10-night Mediterranean Cruise, also starting in Barcelona, Spain but ending in Italy.

On our current cruise to West Africa we left Barcelona Friday evening and we get to Cadiz, Spain tomorrow (Sunday) morning.  In Cadiz we’re going on a pretty cool cruise tour I think, so I may have photos and stuff to report then, but so far nothing.  It’s been hard to deal with my hand, or lack thereof, plus the jet lag.  So far Scott and I have slept a lot. We will sleep, wake up, eat, go back to sleep, wake up, go eat, etc. etc.  The attached map shows the location of our ship a few hours ago, and by the time get to the Strait of Gibraltar, it will be dark and we will be asleep again.

I’m excited as Cadiz is where Christopher Columbus sailed from on his 2nd and 4th cruises.  I’ve always been amazed at how small Columbus's ships were, compared with today’s cruise ships.

Sunday, December 21 (Cadiz)

We docked around 8 am I believe.  Cadiz is widely considered the oldest continuously inhabited city in Spain and Western Europe.  It is in the southern part of Spain, and mostly sunny weather, but about 50 days a year they have rain.  Today was one of the rainy days, Scott and I started off with a little bus tour, but it was difficult to take pictures from the bus because it was raining so hard, but anyway I took the following photo from the bus, of the structure that is the entrance from the old city to the new city, called the Puertas de Tierra (Land Gate), a historic city gate and defensive wall in Cadiz.

There were lots of these built to keep out a series of invaders. Cadiz was occupied a lot starting with the Phoenicians, then the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Moors, the Goths, the French. and Pirates. The most famous pirate being Sir Francis Drake.  At least to the Spanish he was a pirate, to the English he was a national hero.  

The next photo is the Monument to the Constitution of 1812 that commemorates the centennial of the signing of the Constitution of 1812.  This constitution was established during the Peninsular War (Napoleonic invasion) as a response to limit the king's power.  The monument was commissioned in 1912 and completed in 1929. 

All along the coast many buildings have watchtowers on the roofs, they communicated to the ships from these watchtowers with lights and flags and that’s how the ships could come to shore. There’s about 198 of these along the coastline in Cadiz.  The following photo (to the right of the photo) shows the Casa de las Cinco Torres (House of the Five Towers), an iconic 18th-century building located in the Plaza de España.  It was a grand 18th-century Baroque summer residence built for a wealthy merchant, and known for its distinctive five towers used for spotting ships.

In the next photo you can see a typical narrow street in the old town, at the end of the street is a cannon (which doesn’t really show up in this photo, but there are plenty of these cannon photos on the Internet).  They used cannons that weren’t functioning to plant on the corners to protect the corners of the buildings from the horses and various vehicles that would go by that could damage the buildings, which is pretty clever I think.  The new part of town has wider streets and everybody in Cadiz lives in an apartment or a flat. There’s no room for single-family homes, so that’s my history lesson about Cadiz.

Later after the bus tour were the flamenco dancers at the La Cava tavern, located a couple of blocks from where our ship docked.  These were among the best flamenco dancers I’ve ever seen, they were absolutely fabulous.  The guy that’s singing was emotional.  The dancers danced beautifully and interacted wonderfully so it was a great event.  And they didn’t make fools of the audience by having people get up and try dancing.

We had wine and tapas (small Spanish snacks) and had a great time. Then we had our choice to go out in the rain for a walking tour or go back to our ship. We came back to the ship because I couldn’t get my injured hand bandage wet and Scott had gotten sick so I needed to check on him.   See the following 5 photos of the dancers.

Tomorrow will be a sea day as we cruise to the Canary Islands, our two stops will be at Lanzarote on Tuesday and Tenerife on Wednesday.

Monday, December 22 (Sea Day)

Tuesday, December 23 (Canary Islands, Lanzarote)

This morning Scott and my ship docked at Arrecife, the capital city and main port of the island of Lanzarote which is the fourth-largest Canary Island.  Our first tour of the day was to the Timanfaya National Park which is known for its moon-like landscape, or moonscape.  It was amazing, I’ve seen it before but this was a little more up close and personal, and I was really taken with the various contours and colors of the natural landscape which is all volcanic, the park covers about a fourth of the island. Astronauts from both NASA and the European Space Agency have trained at Lanzarote's volcanic landscapes since it strongly resembles the Moon.  Below are three photos of the moonscape, showing the various colors.

The history of the volcanoes is interesting, going back to the 1800s, but the island itself is 15 to 20 million years old, so it’s all pretty darn interesting. We went to a place where it’s still warm so the first thing the guides did was pick up some lava, over 100F, and put it in our hands, ...warm but not "hot,"

Then we went to a place where they put some brush in a ground hole, which was much hotter, it took maybe 60 seconds for the brush to catch on fire.

Then we went up a little further where the lava temperature was around 300F just below the surface and they poured water Into the hole and you saw the big spout of steam that came up.   

That was amazing and interesting, it was a real enjoyable time to see that moonscape and all of the “experiments.”

After the moonscape tour Scott and I hopped back on the bus and went through more and more and more moonscape with some very interesting craters, and stalagmites kind of things and then well you can see what was next. They were waiting for us at the camel station at the entrance to the park.

Yes, Scott and I went on a camel ride through the moonscape there.  In the following photos you can see Scott on our camel, whose name is Manuela.

Almost all of the camels that take the loads of the tourists are females as our guide said the males just don’t work very hard.  Manuela was quite docile but as you could see, she had her face covered up so she couldn’t spit or bite, not that I’ve ever had that problem with camels before.

The camel ride was a lot of fun.  Below are a couple more photos, the first photo is of some other folks in the camel ride.

After Scott and my camel ride our next island tour took us to a winery, the Bodega Antonio Suarez, a well-known, family-run, winery and vineyard located in the unique volcanic landscape of the La Geria wine region.  It’s a very different looking winery from what you normally think of because the plants are in hand-dug volcanic craters protected by stone walls. The lava rocks (see photo below) retain water and the moisture that comes with the winds and dew is enough to keep the plants watered, and the soil is very very rich.

They put some of the ash in the pits of these holes that they dig to plant the vines and other plants they grow.

They had just harvested so there weren’t many nice big plants to see, but I took a picture of one that they left just for us to look at, pretty cool huh?  In La Geria, the most important grape is the Malvasía Volcánica, a unique, native white grape.

They have thousands of these pits with vines and plants growing in them across the countryside and it’s all done by hand, really amazing, and the wine is excellent.  Lanzarote wine has a distinct flavor due to the island’s special soil I'm told.

From a distance, the whole area looks like some bizarre art installation.  See the following two photos.

On our ride around the island we noticed that all the houses seemed to be white with either green trim for agricultural areas or blue for the ones near the ocean.  I found out this is known as the Manrique Influence, as artist César Manrique pushed for this look.  He was a visionary artist, sculptor, and environmentalist from Lanzarote.

Sometimes you will read there are seven islands in the Canary Islands, sometimes you will read there are eight islands.  Why the difference you might ask.   Here’s what I found out.  "In 2018, the General Commission of Autonomous Communities of the Senate unanimously approved a historic motion granting La Graciosa the status of the eighth inhabited island of the Canary Islands, moving beyond its designation as a mere islet. This decision marked a milestone in the island’s history and its recognition as an integral part of the Canary archipelago.”  Interesting stuff.

I enjoyed today's visit to the Canary Islands.  In 2024 I was in the Canary Islands with my friend Sara as part of a 12-night cruise, but we didn't stop at Lanzarote.  I visited the Canary Islands in 2018 also.

We leave the island of Lanzarote tonight and cruise to our second and last stop in the Canary Islands, the Tenerife island, we are scheduled to arrive Wednesday around  8 am.

Wednesday, December 24 (Canary Islands, Tenerife)

Today Scott and I arrived at the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, this was our 2nd and last stop in the Canary Islands on this cruise. 

First, I want to mention that the Canary Islands are named after "dogs" that the Romans found when they came here around 40 BCE.  The “dogs” may have been large, wild dogs, or some say maybe monk seals that were called sea dogs.   The Latin term for the Canary Islands is Canariae Insulae, meaning "Islands of the Dogs," derived from canis (dog) and insula (island). The yellow birds that we know today as canaries were later named after the islands, not the other way around.  I had always thought the Canary Islands were named after the Canary bird, but no, named after “dogs."

With that bit of history out of the way I have a few photos to share. The first picture was taken at "Playa de las Teresitas" (translates to Las Teresitas Beach), a famous golden-sand beach in the village of San Andrés on the Tenerife island.  It was Christmas Eve today in the Canary Islands. The beaches were full of people, it never occurred to me to go to the beach on Christmas Eve, did it occur to any of you readers?  Certainly not you New Yorkers, maybe some of you in Florida or California.

Scott and I took a 4x4 excursion to the other side of the island, and like the island of Lanzarote, Tenerife is also volcanic.  But Tenerife seems to have better water so it’s very green as we went over the rolling mountains and hills and they were such a contrast to the ones we saw in Lanzarote that I took a ton of pictures, but most of them didn’t turn out, cause they were guardrails in them, but the following three photos don’t have guardrails in them.

Later we went to the black sand beach at Playa del Roque de las Bodegas (translates to Beach of the Rock of the Wineries). Only thing is it was high tide so we didn't see any black sand. We could only see the rocks, big black rocks, but they were nice.  

The last photo is a beautiful formation of the black sand beach. I waited and waited and waited for a big wave to come. It was fun to see the big wave shooting above the rock, but every time I turned to talk to somebody or somebody talked to me, a big wave would come and I would miss it, so my photo below has only a little wave.  If you look close to the photo you can see that there is a walkway for people, but it certainly could be dangerous.

That’s my story and now we’re back on our ship and I’m waiting for Scott because we’re having Christmas goose for dinner.

Earlier I wrote that we had rain in Cadiz, well we had rain in Tenerife as well, and half of the trip was aborted because of rain.  But that's OK cause we needed to get back to the ship so Scott could get more meds.

There was a huge ship that docked next to ours. It was the AIDAcosma.  I was reminded of the ship Costa Concordia since both ships belong to sister cruise lines (Costa Cruises & AIDA Cruises).  The Costa Concordia was the ship that tipped over in Italy, and the captain abandoned ship before all passengers and crew were evacuated.

I looked out our cabin's window and there was a huge tanker parked next to the AIDAcosma I was wondering if they were refueling from the oil tanker or if that tanker just happened to be there, or maybe was there to keep the AIDAcosma from tipping over.  I thought that was a pretty funny thing to think, that maybe the tanker was there to prevent the AIDAcosma from tipping over.

Later in the day when Scott and I came back from our so-called 4x4 excursion exploring the island that was aborted due to rain (more of a 2x4 excursion ha ha), the tanker was gone. I guess the tanker wasn't to keep the AIDAcosma from tipping over, It was to refuel.  I just thought it was kind of a fun fantasy to think that the tanker was there to keep the AIDAcosma from tipping over. The AIDAcosma is one huge tall ship, with 11 passenger decks compared with 6 passenger decks on our cruise ship, the Seven Seas Voyager.

But since I am writing about the AIDAcosma, that ship has a very distinctive paint job on the hull.   I believe all of the AIDA Cruises ships have the iconic, colorful design with giant, puckered red lips on the bow and a large eye with eyeshadow on each side, along with blue waves extending down the hull.  I wish now I had taken a photo of the AIDAcosma (and the tanker).  Several other cruise lines use hull art also, which I love the looks of, like the Norwegian Cruise Line.

In late 2022 my friend Sara and I signed up for an Eastern Caribbean islands cruise on the Norwegian Gem, which had beautiful artwork on the hull, all gemstones, which gave the ship its name.  Most cruise ships I've been on have just a single color paint job on the hull above the water line.

I’m attaching below photos of the AIDAcosma and the Norwegian Gem (all lifted from the Internet of course). 

AIDAcosma below (2 photos)

Norwegian Gem below (one photos)

Thursday, December 25 (Christmas Day and a Sea Day)

Christmas at sea with Diane and Scott... not much new going on except there is caroling in the lobby where they will dump artificial snow from the high balcony. Beautiful but too bad for the cleaning crew.  

I did go to the lecture about staying safe which covered some ideas of danger I never thought about.   They had videos of pickpockets that they call matadors because they usually cover their pickpocketing hand.  Tip #1, if someone asks you to watch their bags don't because pickpockets working in teams can come take the bag and when you go to confront them you become the victim and you lose your wallet for someone elses new trinkets or underwear.  Who ever thought of that.  and more.  I'll watch it again.

Dinner last night was goose, tonight turkey yippee.

Friday, December 26 (Sea Day)

Today is our second sea day as our ship sails from the Canary Islands to Mindelo in Cape Verde, which we should reach tomorrow morning.

The first photo below is of the Atlantic Ocean, which is 13,000 feet deep at this location.

The big news of the day is we had a pirate drill. They announced on the intercom that it was an exercise, but that they also said there was a suspicious boat coming close to us.  So everyone has to go off of the decks, off of the cabin balconies, out of their state rooms into the hallways and lie down. You should’ve seen the hallway strewn with antiquated bodies.  We all  just kept laughing and laughing cause somebody said they’re gonna have to come through with a derrick so we can get up.  It was pretty darn funny. We were told that the only thing they worry about is a ship coming close with machine guns and that’s why we had to have the drill and to lie down in the hallways.  I didn't hear what happened to the suspicious boat.

But speaking of pirate drills, back in 2016 Scott and I were on a cruise from Dubai to Singapore and it seemed that every night just as the sun went down and the lights in the ship went on, the staff rushed around and closed all of the curtains.  I protested, as I wanted to see out.  But it was not negotiable.  The steward said it was unlikely that pirates would try to board a cruise ship, however they were taking those precautions.  Coincidentally that ship was also the Seven Seas Voyager, the same ship Scott and I are on this Western Africa cruise.

On the 2016 cruise a fellow passenger told me that some friends of his were on an ocean cruise and the pirates did threaten them.  The ship's staff had everyone go into the hallways.  Then they asked for volunteers to man the fire hoses and the staff ran barbed wire around the perimeter of the ship That thwarted the pirates. 

So much for pirate drills.  I have had tennis necklace envy ever since I saw the Dodger baseball player Yamamoto wearing his blue sapphire tennis necklace.  So today I went to craft time and made my own.  Attached are necklace photos, but you can tell it isn’t sapphires.  The second photo is just a crop of the first photo.

Saturday, December 27 (Mindelo in Cape Verde)

Today Scott and I were in Cape Verde, although Cabo Verde (or Republic of Cabo Verde) is the country's official name since 2013.  But many people still refer to it as Cape Verde so I'll stick with that.  Cape Verde is an archipelago nation of volcanic islands in the central Atlantic, about 385 miles off West Africa.  The country consists of 10 main islands and islets.  Our ship docked at the São Vicente island at Porto Grande (Portuguese for Grand Harbor) in the city of Mindelo.  The islands of Cape Verde belonged to Portugal before it became an independent nation in 1975.  The city of Mindelo is the second most populous city in Cape Verde and a major culture hub.

While still on our ship we noticed a beautiful three-masted ship sailing out of the harbor (see the photo below).  It was the Sørlandet, a Norwegian heritage tall ship and I later found out that it is currently a training vessel for high schoolers, and was en route to Suriname, South America.  The objective of the ship’s sailing activities is to offer the general public an experience in traditional life on board a tall ship. The Sørlandet is open for charter cruises (no previous sailing experience is required) and is the oldest full-rigged ship in operation in the world (launched in 1927).  Interesting stuff.

After we left the ship we went on a walking tour, first walking along the shore and we saw what appeared to be abandoned fishing boats (photo below), but we were assured that they were well used because fishing is 75% of the economy and tourism is the other 25%.

After we saw the fishing boats we went to the fish market. There were typical people selling fish, cutting fish and doing all that fish stuff. I took the following photo of that live-more-or-less-maybe-not-so-live sculpture of the fish.  Red Drum fish maybe.  Everything piled up, and it was pretty interesting.

Next we were taken to Le Goût de Grills (translates to The Taste of Grills) restaurant for refreshments, music and a dance performance.  The lady dancer appeared to be pregnant and her costume was makeshift at best. The dancing was sweet and very basic.  I figured out the steps but could not wiggle my fanny quite the same. You can see the stage and musicians in the background.  See photo below. 

After that Scott and I walked along the water and went by the big acacia tree shown in the following photo. The Acacia trees in Cape Verde are different from the ones Scott and I saw during our 2018 Africa Safari, it wasn’t as tall and sparse and didn’t have the big thorns like the ones in Africa.  The statue partially hidden by the tree is of Diogo Afonso, a Portuguese navigator credited with discovering the islands of São Vicente and Santo Antão around 1462.

We went to the Municipal Market or holiday market as they called it, (photo below), where a variety of goods are sold, including fresh produce, handicrafts, and local products.. What was interesting to me was in all those little booths. They had a whole section of what looked like dried out weeds. That's the place the Witches or Strega or whatever they call them use to make their potions or teas to cure people of whatever.  It can be  anything from a cold to diarrhea. I thought that it was interesting that it was very very prevalent in that market., 

This is where we had the excitement of the day. There was a lady with a cane and a hat that we thought was mild mannered and very sweet, and then there was another woman who walked by her, who pointed her finger at the sweet lady, and that lady bit her. Yep bit her. and the bite-ee so to speak walked right in front of us with blood dripping off of her finger screaming "I’ll find out who you are and where you are and I’ll sue you etc. etc. etc."  People tried to help her but she didn’t want any help. We don’t know what happened other than that.  We later learned that the lady that was bitten is from England and she is officially a lady and her husband a Lord.  They insist on being treated as such.  So it makes it kind of a sad story because who would ever bite another human being, but it happened and then for it to happen to a Lord‘s wife, the Lady just kind of tickles me.

While on our walk we saw a couple of relief wall sculptures on the side of a building. The following photo shows one wall sculpture depicting 5 figures dancing.  The sculpture is signed "Ro and Nild Interart 95" at the bottom right.  Ro and Nild were a collaborative duo of visual artists, famous in Mindelo.  

The next photo shows another wall sculpture that shows 10 figures in dynamic poses, showing a musical performance or celebration of some kind.  This sculpture was also signed "Ro & Nild" at the bottom right, but not shown in this photo.

For no special reason below is a Google Street View that shows the two above relief wall sculptures.

Scott and I also went to the Centro Nacional de Arte, Artesanato e Design (CNAD), a national cultural center and museum in Mindelo, and some of the art there is just wonderful. The art was unusual and interesting, creative.  The blue hanging down Mobile thing (following photo) was made from plastic that had washed the shore and I thought that was kind of a nice use of rubbish.

Below is some Atelier Piká Pedra art being shown at the museum.  Atelier Piká Pedra art is a Cape Verdean artisan studio specializing in unique, handmade crafts, primarily using stone, metal, and paper.

The photo below is of a facade of the museum building.  The big colorful circles are basically the emblem of the island, thousands of drum heads and each color stands for a different note in the Cape Verde music and also some of them are tributes to people that have sent money home to support the Cape Verde economy. They were quite colorful and big and nice.  The circles are on at least two sides of the building (that I could see).

The photo below is of a ceramic sculpture by Brazilian artist Miguel dos Santos, I thought it was almost a little creepy, but fascinating.

The museum tour was a really nice experience, and better than the biting if I have to say so.

The photo below shows the port area, with our cruise ship (Seven Seas Voyager) docked at the pier.

The photo below shows Praia da Laginha (translates from Portuguese to Laginha Beach or Little Lagoon Beach), a prominent beach and port area.

And then back to the ship, we had a nap and went to the lectures and just were very busy.

This photo below was taken from our ship and shows the city of Mindelo with Monte Verde mountain in the background.

Tomorrow is a Sea Day, and then Monday we will be at Dakar in Senegal.

Sunday, December 28 (Sea Day)

Monday, December 29 (Dakar in Senegal)

This morning Scott and I arrived at Dakar, in Senegal, Africa, it’s our first stop in an African country since this cruise began.

The sunrise was so spectacular I had to take a photo of a large cargo ship on the ocean horizon as we approached Dakar.  Welcome to Africa where the sunrises are orange instead of pink. Sort of in your face.  

I’m gonna start this by saying this particular trip or excursion. It was so devastating that when I got back to the ship, I couldn’t do anything but sleep and later go for a drink. I will share some of the gory details, Gorée Island (a small island off Senegal) is a mixed bag. It was seat of the French government that ruled Senegal for many years and also overall the slave trade. From the governor’s mansion, one of the pictures in this that I will mention again, there are islands like Goree Island all along the West African coast, and I suspect the conditions and all of them are similar.

The next photo I took as our ferry from Dakar approached Gorée Island.

The following photo is the entrance to Gorée Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site off the coast of Dakar, Senegal.  Gorée Island is recognized globally for its history as a major center of the Atlantic slave trade. 

The following photo was taken near where the ferry dropped us off, you see it’s just kind of a normal looking island. It’s a town Square, we were there pretty darn early so the businesses hadn’t opened, but the merchants were already setting it up to try to get us to buy stuff. 

The next two photos show the waterfront of Gorée Island, with lots of boats.  The building in the first photo is Fort d'Estrées, built by the French in the 1850s to defend Dakar's harbor from the British, which now houses the Historical Museum of Senegal.  The prominent red building in the second photo is the historic House of Slaves (Maison des Esclaves).  

The following photo shows a long row of pink buildings for schools that were set up by the French and the following beautiful yellow-ish alley that also had and still has hospitals and schools. The schools were really a big deal back when the French were governing the island.

The next photo shows the Governor's Palace which looks pretty rundown.  When Dakar got their independence in 1965, It was no longer used for that but ostensibly a museum that wasn’t open. And they were raising goats in the front yard.

The island is busy. 1500 people live on this island with lots and lots of children so their schools are full. They are 90% Muslim and 10% Christian and they get along fine. They have desalinated water. The big industry is tourism.

In the next photo is a school, a kindergarten.  The school is named after Mame Coumba Castel, the spirit of that island, a maritime divinity who took the form of a beautiful woman.

We walked past a catholic church, the first photo shows the Church of Saint Charles Borromée, built in 1830 during the French colonial presence.  The second photo shows a crèche at  this church, which was particularly interesting because here it is an all black country and the figures of Jesus and all were white.

The next two photos show where Scott and I walked down another alley, which had a Baobab tree which is their pride and joy. It’s not as big as some of the other ones we’re gonna see, but the tree is interesting because it’s roots go really really deep and go all the way out to the sea to nourish itself and there’s the fruit of the tree and the inside of the tree are very important to the culture. 

The following photo shows a mosque, the mosque is the little beige building, and according to our guide, it’s the only single story beige mosque in Africa because most mosques are green and white.  Now the new rules of Islam are that you can pray in your own home, you don’t have to go to the mosque if the mosque is far away, so it doesn’t get heavily attended

So I had to take the following photo of the hair salon. I’m sure you’re all gonna rush over to Gorée Island to have your haircut there. I didn’t either, even though I needed a haircut I didn’t do that before I left.  My hair is this big fluff ball right now as you could’ve seen from some of the photos.

The next photo is of a shop and I just thought it was kinda nice. It’s so nicely contained and has a lot of merchandise.  Items for sale include clothing (dresses, bags), accessories (jewelry, scarves), and other general merchandise. Next to it is another stall selling packaged foods and household items.   By the way we weren’t allowed to take pictures of people because they don’t want their photos to show up on the Internet or on postcards which was a very interesting idea because usually your told they feel like you’re stealing their soul or something when you take their pictures

OK so now for the difficult part of this trip the guy in blue in the following photo was kind of our guide and he was taught English. He was so preacher. He wasn’t an Imam, and a translator. He was so charming, I approached him because I thought he was interesting looking with that totally blue outfit.  He explained to me that the overcoat was a grand Boba and underneath they had a form-fitting Boba and then he had trousers and then he had his fez and then his shoes. It was all color coordinated, you could tell he had a little style issue.  He translated what we heard happened in the House of Slaves.

This is the part that’s so hard.  Slavery was going on in Africa for over 300 years. They shipped over 20 million Africans to America, most of them to Brazil interestingly enough, but they also sent them to the West Indies to America and to Cuba and the Caribbean.  Here's how it worked, the Africans were kidnapped from their villages and brought to the various islands as I mentioned.  First they were weighed if they weighed 120 pounds the men were put in a special cell because they were high priced if they had big muscles, the women were also weighed and they did tell us the differences between the weights. The women and the children were completely separated from the men and all lived in horrid conditions.

They were only allowed to go outside once a day to do whatever they had to do and were fed until the slave boats came, which they came every three months. Then the ones that didn’t weigh enough were then put in a special room where they were fed beans and palm oil to fatten them up for when the slave boats came back after the three months.  It was sort of like how they force feed geese to get their livers bigger so they can then kill them to make liver pate. That was the example they gave us about it

The children were put in a room all to themselves without any access to their mothers. They were completely on the opposite sides of the House of Slaves, and they were sometimes sold, and I don’t know they didn’t talk about that, but they were also sold. Interestingly, the virgin women were put in their own area and if a virgin woman was impregnated by one of the slave traders she was freed and could go back to her village or go wherever to have her baby, but she was freed and there’s a lot of history about these mixed races.

Women leading the rebellions in Africa, but nevertheless this went on for a long time.  In fact those ladies would go out and try to get pregnant by the slave traders.

What was really the horrific stuff we were told about how they were punished, how they had to wear these chains around their ankles with a big heavy ball in between their feet. Such horrific stuff, it just made you cry. My heart was broken to think about people treating people like that. The commentator at the slave house said that nowadays they can’t believe that the slave traders would live on the second floor with toilets and kitchens and servants, while these people were being treated so badly downstairs, it was like the contrast between heaven and hell.

And it was and if they were bad, the punishment was even more awful. The next photo shows the House of Slaves, the left side went the men, the right side, women, and children. the middle with the back were these dungeon areas on the first floor. There were also areas underneath that floor, where the punishment stuff went on. they had to be on their knees for the entire time they were there. The ceilings were high enough for them to ever stand and they never got to go outside for anything and you know what that means.

That open doorway to the sea in that photo was called the Door of No Return because if they went through that door, they never came back to Africa. And that door was also the Door of No Return because when somebody got sick or died, they took them out that door and threw them in the ocean. They didn’t try to heal him. They didn’t try to give him medicine. They just took them out and threw them in the ocean and with those chains on of course they drowned, so that’s why I was just nauseous. I went knowing it was gonna be bad, but it was even worse than I imagined because I just can’t figure out how people could do that to each other. I asked the guy in blue how these people let this happen to them and he said they didn’t let it happen to them. They were kidnapped at gunpoint or with horses that came alone and scooped them up. He said they did not let it happen. They only had spears and the people had guns so the only choice would be to die or go. Sorry for such a cheerful note, but that’s the story.

Tuesday, December 30 (Banjul in Gambia)