Dakar so Far

Dakar has been full of ups and downs since our last post. Mostly our time has been spent filling out paper work and last minute visa applications. We have had the pleasure of meeting some fantastic people as well as some not so fantastic people. Our guide Tasmil turned out to be a major headache, everywhere we went with him turned out to be more expensive and more time consuming then we planned. Finally we asked him to stop following us and sure enough life got easier. Except we almost got arrested at our hotel, because they said our online payment was not valid. I argued for a good 4 hours and showed them all the paper work but they would not accept the online payment. Long story short we ended up paying twice and now I have to go back in and argue my case again.... it is a huge headache and waste of time.

Today however was an great day. We started our day early and went to church with our friend from Liberia. Church in Africa was a new expierence for us all, it is much more energitic and loud then church back home. It also lasted close to 4 hours which was unexpected, but they made us feel very welcome and I learned a few new dance moves. After church we went out to Isle de Gorre which used to be a major slave trading post. The island itself was beatiful which contrasted against the horrible conditions of the slave houses which sent millions of slaves all around the world. Seeing where the slaves were held and the conditions they endured was a sobering expierence. We ended our day exploring the rest of the island and riding ship back to dakar as then sun set out over the ocean.