1FishWife: Holiday continued,

A "Lazy Day"

It was decided that our first day would be a "Lazy Day" - this meant leaving the hotel at 7.00am YES the morning - it wasn't fully light !! and taking a walk on the beach outside the hotel. We loaded up with binoculars/telescope/camera & rucksack containing amongst other stuff a bottle of water something I always take when we go out for the day, and headed out of the hotel onto the beach,

Oddly enough we didn't meet too many people, there were a couple of local lads out and because they see the binoculars most of 'have a friend who is a bird guide' and will know 'the best places to see birds' we always explain that we've been birdwatching in Gambia for over 10 years and know our way round, this is usually sufficient and the chaps leave us alone. A guide is not necessary if all you want is a stroll around but if you want to go to any of the nature reserves then a guide is recommended. We carried on our walk left the beach and headed onto Cape Point Road, we had been walking for a few minutes when we noticed we were being followed by a young Gambian man wearing a tee shirt proclaiming to be a 'professional bird guide' I left Ken to do the talking, he introduced himself as Famara and after a bit of a chat - Ken explaining that we know a bit about birds and would like to do a couple of visits to various sites it was agreed that Famara would be our guide for the holiday, - it only later dawned on us that it wasn't a coincidence that he found us, the chap on the beach had obviously phoned him !

Famara is the one in the straw hat,

He accompanied us on our walk that Saturday pointing out loads of birds and he proved to be a nice chap, he took us round the gardens (we would call them alottments) that belong to the Bakau Ladies Association - anyone can apply for a piece of land and they then cultivate it and grow either for their own consumption or for selling at the local market.

It is getting a bit warm and now and heading towards midday so we decide to head off to beach bar that we had passed on the way, somewhere we had been the previous year, Famara came with us and we had a chat about trips we would take during the holiday and the subject of Georgetown came up, Ken has always wanted to go so we did the maths and although it was going to take a substantial amount of our holiday cash we decided we would do it and gave Famara £200.00 in advance. We also booked to go to Pirang Shrimp Farm and a couple of other bird reserves, with him. I won't bore you with endless bird pictures but there are a few below.