Thies & Rufisque

I spent most of the week in Thies enjoying the warm weather and scenery.  Its pretty laid back and definitely a lot calmer than Dakar.  The trees and bushes are cool too.

 The area around Thies is pretty flat with some dry riverbeds, lots of bushes, and some huge Baobab trees.  It was interesting to walk around in the bush outside of town because the bushes were tall enough to hide the nearby buildings and you could quickly become disorientated with no distinct landmarks with which to navigate.

 Thies is the first big town outside of Dakar and the crossroads of two major roads in Senegal.  There is a small airport outside of town, several businesses and international offices, some factories, and a large military training area.  Food was pretty good and we found a lot of expats eating at "Big Faim," which has huge burgers (bigger than a softball) packed with two hamburger patties and your fries too.

Even though Thies is only 70km from Dakar the trip takes around two hours due to all the congestion in Rufisque, where the autoroute from Dakar condenses into a small two lane road under construction and full of trucks hauling stuff into and out of the city.  Often the large trucks will break down in the middle of the road, backing up traffic for hours.

People swarm the vehicles stuck in traffic selling everything from mangos to parrots.  Others have called it "Wal-Mart on Wheels" as you can buy underwear, lamps, rugs, phone cards, soccer balls, and so on.  If you show interest in an item the vendors will follow you for the whole hour or so it takes for you to creep down the road.