Valentine's Day at Lac Rose
- susannahbane
- Feb 15, 2016
- 6 min read
What happens when five single girls go to Lac Rose on Valentine’s Day?
The romantic, pinky hue turns blue from our lack of a relationship status.
But, also what happens is five toubabs manage to (somewhat) successfully navigate the complicated world of Senegalese public transportation, and in the process travel a long distance for a couple bucks, and see another side of Dakar along the way.
Lac Rose, the famous salinized Senegalese lake known for its pink color, is in the suburbs of Dakar, so getting there by taxi isn’t the cheapest option. Luckily, my wonderful Bradt guide book expertly written by Sean Connolly (who I now feel like I know on a personal level after all the time spent reading his travel hints and tips) told us exactly how to get to Lake Rose via public transportation.
I remember in my first couple days in Dakar I was intimated by the taxis. I couldn’t imagine first having to bargain a price, and then having to tell the driver navigating instructions as to where I wanted him to go. At that time, the city felt so foreign and confusing to me I didn’t have the confidence to direct myself much less another person who only spoke a little heavily accented French. However, I now have grown tired of the 1,500 CFA rides (equivalent of $2.75, ha!) and I wanted to break into the confusing realm of Dakar’s buses.
With four fellow adventure buddies by my side, we set off to first make it from Mermoz to the Terminus Peterson in downtown Dakar where we would pick up the bus that would take us most of the way to Lac Rose. We got off to a great start. After standing for only a couple minutes at the stop, a creaking white TaTa bus (the colloquial name for the semi-private bus system) pulled up with a sign in the window that said “Ligne 3: Peterson.”
“That’s us, guys, jump on!” I shouted confidently as the bus came only to a rolling stop and we piled on. We handed the ticket man 150 CFA each (little under 25 cents) and headed down familiar streets to the main bus terminus. At the terminus, we had to find a bus serving line 56. As it was the main terminus in the downtown business district for the TaTa buses, I expected to find buses neatly lined up, their destinations (such as Lac Rose) carefully spelled out. How naïve I was! We pulled into the terminus, which actually looked just like a huge parking lot of vehicles all arranged randomly. We asked a couple people until we saw a half-full bus wedged between two others that looked like they had been out of service for a long time. A “56” in the window seemed promising and once on board I checked with two other women to make sure this would take us to Keur Massar, which was our switching point before the final bus to Lac Rose. We paid our 150 CFA again (current grand total per person: 45 cents). We were feeling good and I was feeling confident, I could practically see the poetic pink hue of the lake!
About 15 minutes into the trip, two of our fearless team weren’t feeling so hot. The bus was stop-and-go as we made our way out of the busy city, and in the heat of the afternoon the bus had the distinct odor of humanity and car exhaust. Add to that the cramped swaying of bodies with each turn and you get the perfect recipe for motion sickness. All of a sudden, we broke into a performance I’m sure all the other Senegalese on the bus were not expecting to see on their commute: Toubabs Get Sick. One girl leaned out the open door to get sick while another quickly opened a window and stuck her head out, her pale face just inches from every car whizzing by. We offered nausea tablets and water, while I reassured our intrepid, yet shaken, travelers that we were almost there. Of course, I had no idea how far we were, and after it became clear our friends needed to get off the bus before someone was decapitated mid-vomit by a passing car, we disembarked early. On the side of the road we bought some water bags (yes, the easiest way to buy water on the side of the road is these little sachets of water which claim to be 100% filtered) and allowed everyone to catch their breath while reassessing. We decided to switch to a taxi for a more direct route, and bargained to a pretty good price since we were already over halfway there.
The lake itself was pretty anticlimactic. Though we went at the right time of day and season to get a good pink hue, the luck just wasn’t in our favor. If you squinted, cocked your head, and imagined really hard it looked a little indigo but it wasn’t anything I would call pink. Nevertheless, you can’t come to Senegal and not go to Lac Rose, and we did enjoy a yummy meal of chicken yassa at a quiet little restaurant. While we walked around the lake, the elephant in the room was the fact that we had not yet said goodbye to the nausea-inducing enemy known as the TaTa Bus…we still had to get home. However, one of our two was feeling back to normal, and another had managed to, umm, “eliminate” her lunch before getting back on the bus so we thought it would be okay. This time we started on bus 76 which was supposed to take us to Keur Massar, where we would switch back on to bus 56 return to downtown Dakar.
Keur Massar will forever be known to me as the neighborhood that never ends. We drove through small neighborhood after small neighborhood, and as the sky darkened I was getting worried that we were going to be pulling up in St. Louis at midnight. Before the panic set in, however, it was very interesting to see the suburbs of Dakar, as these smaller communities lack much of the glamor that characterizes the parts we have come to know.
Here's some pictures of the neighborhoods we drove through...
After about an hour of this nighttime tour, my white, nervous knuckles gripping the seat in front of me, I asked our crew member with the best French to ask the man sitting next to her if we were near the end of the line. Luckily, he reassured us we would arrive soon, and then told us we shouldn’t bother with another bus but just take a taxi straight to Mermoz. After checking in with someone who actually knew where he was, we all relaxed a little. With each passing minute that the bus did not come to a complete stop I glanced over to make sure he was still with us, but every time he was just sitting back, headphones in, no look of confusion on his face. I thought of him as our little guardian angel.
The rest of the commuters rode in silence but in our back corner of the bus we joked about the fact that we had ridden this leg of the journey without paying (it was unclear when we were supposed to pay and so we just never did!), and imagined how traumatized we would have been if we had attempted this escapade in our first weekend in Senegal. We also noted the excitement we had brought to the lives of the people we had passed on our drive. The roadside fruit and peanut sellers had the monotony of their day broken when they got to see a very brave, but very sick, white girl hang her head out the window, leaving a little vomit trail behind as we weaved through the suburbs.
Just when we were about to lose hope, our anonymous travel guide said he was getting off at this stop but the end was very soon. Sure enough, not too long after his departure we came to a complete stop and switched to a taxi (1,000 CFA each= $1.75) that took us right to our neighborhood.
I can say without a shadow of a doubt that it was certainly my most unique Valentine’s Day ever. And, it was the perfect Valentine’s Day for me. I might not have spent it with a traditional ‘valentine,’ but I did share my day with girls who inspire me. Girls who aren’t afraid to try and take confusing transportation in a bustling city that speaks another language. Girls who might get knocked down by normal bodily reactions but keep on fighting. Girls who spend a Valentine’s Day being total bosses of their own lives without getting frustrated at each other or the situation. It was the perfect Valentine’s Day for me at this moment in my life’s journey because it was a day filled with adventure. It quenched my thirst for exploration and filled my heart with the beauty and scariness and wonder of this world. I certainly missed all those who I normally would connect with on Valentine’s Day, but while I sat squished in the corner of a bus careening through the back roads of Dakar at night, I realized I wouldn’t want to have spent this day anywhere else.
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