Monday, November 1, 2010

Lac Rose & Ngor Island


Senegal is a great place for holidays!  We get all Muslim and Catholic holidays so today Dakar was still a ghost town and we could move around easily as traffic was light.  In the morning we drove out to Lac Rose, a small saltwater lake north of Dakar that was made famous as the former finish line of the Paris-Dakar rally and its pink waters.  The lake turns pink in the dry season in certain light, but today the water looked golden to me.  Dozens of locals were in the water scooping salt water off the bottom of the lake and bringing it ashore in boats where it was piled in large heaps on the beach.

As soon as we stepped out of the car we were swarmed by the local vendors selling all kinds of crap.  Today the big items were sand paintings and cups made from cow horns.  Since the vendors were so aggressive we didnt stay too long by the salt piles and ended up driving around most of the lake.

After a quick lunch we went diving again off Ngor Island and saw several schools of hand-sized fish, a couple Morey eels, and other larger fish.  I was the first one to run out of air on the dive and had to share with the dive master to stay under with the group.  Everyone says the best way to increase my bottom time is to dive more often so i'll have to keep at it.  We ended up with 32 mins of bottom time at 26 meters.

Later we took the pirogue out to Ngor island to tour the top side of the island and watched the surfers on the west side.  The waves were waist high and bigger and five or six surfers had taken the boat from Ngor beach and were getting some decent rides.  We ate dinner at sunset on the water then took the pirogue back to the beach in the dark.

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