December 21, 2008

Today we have our Christmas Eve Dinner. We are a little bit ahead of the rest of the planet, because we are leaving tomorrow to Morocco and there will be no place to cook real X-mas dinner or make mulled wine for that matter.

Here are my travel companions, Becca and Pete:

And early-early morning we crossed the ferry, ate our meager breakfast of tapalapa (local bread) with one hard-boiled egg, mayo and ketchup, and boarded the car heading towards Dakar - our city of departure.

The trip started with one day spent in Dakar - we visited Christmas tree in the local mall - an amazing structure of steel and glass and Diesel and Guess... We don't have those in The Gambia, made me feel almost at home.

Walked around that crazily-expensive, vibrant, lively, very tiring city. Visited museum, my favorite park and the best bar on top of the tallest building. Relaxed and enjoyed West Africa in its brightest.

We stayed in the nice little hostel next to the light house.

In the evening, closer to the sunset we decided to climb the light house hill and see if there is anything of interest. Little did we know. As soon as we got close to the actual house we were greeted by the lighthouse operator (third generation on the job) who walked us around, showed us light bulbs from 100 years ago (huge!) and the current light bulbs that they are using (cute!). He even allowed us to climb into the actual glass-rotating-shell of the light. There is this tiny (about 2 -3 inches ) light bulb surrounded by the huge polished glass cage. It reflect the light and sends it many miles across. The contrast between the small tiny bulb and the amount of light it produces is amazing. So are the pictures taken from the inside.

And in the evening we left Dakar-Madrid arriving in Madrid at 5 AM the following day. The original plan was to go out into snowy, christmasy Madrid and walk around, enjoying Europe, till our next flight which is at 1 PM. Unfortunately it is not easy to fly out of Africa. On our arrival, after clearing through the passport control, we went to pick up our bags, but alas... Some multiple-legged, poisonous, unknown-to-science (or airport crew), scary African insect was seen in the baggage compartment and the entire aircraft was quarantined for 3 hours with deadly fumes. I have no idea what it was or what they did to our bags. All I know that it was freezing, we could not go anywhere as we had to wait for our bags and it was really really boring. Good thing that I managed to "borrow" an airplane blanket and I spend most of my time in Madrid wrapped in it. Actually it was so cold and so boring that we started doing exercises to the much enjoyment of the proper European crowd. Well, at least we got warmed up.

Finally our bags came and I run to the next terminal as I had only 30 minutes till the closing of my check-in. I get there and they inform me that my flight to Casablanca is canceled and I have to fly to Paris and them, Casablanca... Oh, traveling. How much I hate this thing. On the brighter note they flew me Paris-Casablanca first class and I got to drink champagne, eat cheese, grapes, lamb and chocolate pastries so it was not too bad... :))