Bound for Bandia

June 22, 2008

Known as a fairly big private reserve that was established in the Dakar area in 1986, and about one and a half hours or 65 km from the city center, Bandia is a huge tourist attraction: mistakenly so, if I may be permitted to comment. On the way there, you pass a wonderful forest of baobabs, which is certainly typical of the region and impressive to see. Upon arrival, you are decked out with a guide and possibly a rental jeep and all sorts of things that cost a lot of money and then you proceed to see a sleepy rhino, a happy family of giraffes, some wild boars, and that pretty much completes the picture. If I am not mistaken, there are a few ostriches and grazing gazelles as well.

More unusual than any of this is the sight of a griot, or singer of the lower caste, whose remains are on view within the hollow trunk of a baobab (these trees, which lose heir leaves during the dry season, can live up to a thousand years and their trunks become increasingly hollow with the passage of time). So if any of this is worth going out of your way for, be my guest. The website calls the trip an unforgettable experience, and though it may well be, it is simply not what I had in mind when I pictured my first time in an African game park. I wanted lions and zebras, not hours of time spent in the hot sun hoping beyond hope to see something more exciting than a wild boar.

We did get extremely close to the rhino, however, and I remember feeling slightly scared by this, as I’d heard they were dangerous. The guide gave me the dubious reassurance that he had no desire to be killed, and that I should relax – at the first sign of danger, he’d be the first to turn and run! At the very pretty lakeside café on the grounds where we paused for pizza, alert watchers could see the occasional snout of a crocodile as he zigzagged across the lake, presumably on the lookout for his own lunch.

Waving goodbye to Bandia, we then travelled on a bit further to the Pink Lake, Lac Rose, which does have a special color because of its plentiful salt and mineral deposits (apparently 350 grams of salt per liter), but again, it is not a Good-n-Plenty kind of pink, nor even a strawberry-frosted doughnut kind of pink - it is more along the lines of pale red muddy sludge. You can go in and float for a bit, as the water is extremely salty. After your dip, you are rinsed with fresh well water to get the salt off your skin in what amounts to an outdoor shower of sorts: a smiling man with a bucket pours water on you (for a small fee, of course). The mineral deposits form white crystals on the grass which take to the air, dancing like snowflakes with every breeze, and this is quite enchanting.

The charmed moment came to an abrupt end: instead of sugar plum fairies, the tchotchke vendors descended upon us on our way back to the car. No matter how politely you explain that no, you have no need of a beaded necklace or a woven basket or a picture in colored sand or any of the other schlock they are hauling around in baskets on their heads, they continue to swarm around until you either a) lose your temper and shout something that sounds like ‘barna’ which means ‘Enough!’ in Wolof or b) break down and buy something you neither want nor need because you feel bad, it is hot and they are miserably poor.