After a great last meal from Elizabeth at our campement, we gathered everything together (including the tonnes of washing) and packed for an early start. Getting up at 6am, we grabbed a quick breakfast - standard omlette in a baguette and uber-sweet coffee - before getting to the gare routiere in time for the first bus. Ended up waiting there for an hour or so before we set off for Ziguinchor again to get our visas for Guinea-Bissau (GB).
Getting the visas was the easiest thing on this trip thus far! We walked in, paid 10,000 CFA (just over a tenner), and they returned our passports within ten minutes! EASY! More complications on the horizon for Guinea-Bissau though... Headed for the gare routiere in Zig to try and get to Varela, on the GB coast in one day. Well, after lunch. Cheap plat du jour, dish of the day, for just over a quid. Love these prices.
Varela had a brilliant write up in a few of the travel guides, supposedly far better than the beaches of southern Senegal -especially Cap Skiring, which has had a tourist boom in the last few years. It was also lauded on the internet, so we decided to give it a try. It'd be nice to have a beach for a few days!
After crossing the border on the most overfull minibus yet (about 40 people) we arrived in Sao Domingo, just over the border. A crowd of drivers gathered round us in the tiny gare routiere and we eventually discovered that there was no minibus to Varela until tomorrow. We were quite the celebrities and were hassled a lot. Just to make it more confusing, Guinea-Bissau's official language was Portuguese - liberated in the 1970's. And unfortunately for us we had no idea of any Portuguese - bar a few phrases Barney had got from the web. The guidebook we had for GB said see Cape Verde's section for some phrases. We'd got rid of the Cape Verde section as we weren't going there. D'oh!
Luckily we had Franco's number ("Ah Franco!"), who was the owner of the only place to stay in Varela - a three hour journey towards the coast. Dree called from someone's phone and after a confusing discussion Franco said he'd expect us tomorrow morning.
Now to find a place to stay. We walked through the town (don't think many tourists stay here) but the only place that was in the guide book was shut. A couple of guys showed us to a motel up the road. The translation above the door made us think that it maybe a place you can pay for by the hour... a house of ill repute... but we had nowhere else to go and so we bedded down for the night.
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