Birthday beers

Another insight into the world of overlanding is the importance of finding ice along with beer to stock the bar. Previous attempts, often made more difficult by such limited French included some free ice from a (closed) restaurant and ice at the boarder.

delivering the precious cargo

As the official barman of this leg the responsibility was weighing heavy as we pulled into town for the final bar day. Since we'd already been there the previous day beer was not a problem (unlike some of the Islamic stops en-route) a local chap was most keen to help us find whatever we were looking for, although it wasn't entirely clear he understood what this was. Indeed this proved to be the case, after a few blocks in the midday sun we got to a wholesaler of drinks. They seemed to understand the repetition of glacé (the only word I know for ice in French) and off we went asking a few people along the way, with only a minor retracing of our steps we reached a retailer. The lack of electricity of fridge units didn't seem promising and again we were thwarted, he'd been on the search for a glaciér - an ice box. But finally the penny dropped & off we went again to about 1 block from where we'd started 20 minutes previously. In through the back of a house and some 20cent blocks of ice - victory for the persistent overlander.

A gentle drive up to the coast, within a couple of hours of dakar and a beautiful spot for celebrating our last night of the trip with the whole group, and my birthday.  Thanks especially to Ida, Annie & Rowan for the presents and Annie for producing both a cake and custard!

Pool & Sea in one shot