First Look at Saint Louis from Santhiaba – Senegal Travel Diary #12

Join me on my first walk in Saint Louis, Senegal. This is not the tourist side, but an area called Santhiaba – a fishing village across the bridge from downtown Saint Louis. It’s a lively and active neighborhood and there always seems to be something going on.

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This side of the river is dominated by horse carts, fishing boats, goats and taxis. This video will give you a fully honest look at this street along the river along with my commentary.

The distances are very short here and the river is easy to cross, by taxi or on foot.

Video Transcript

We just arrived yesterday in Saint Louis Senegal.

And I wanted to show it to you.

It’s a very interesting place.

We are actually not in the tourist area on the main island.

We are actually across the river, across a bridge.

It’s like spitting distance, five minute walk to get to the main island

but it’s a whole lot more affordable and honestly

a whole lot more interesting.

I think, I don’t know, I haven’t, I went to the main island yesterday

and it’s just, there’s two strips of land. It’s like, there’s the mainland.

And then there’s a strip.

That’s Saint Louis.

That’s the tourist area.

And then there is this other little strip and that’s this side, which
is more fishing village.

So let me flip the camera, and oh gosh there it is.

I’ll just show you around a little bit.

There’s the bridge. That is main island, Saint Louis and you can see all the boats and that for shipping,

I’m not gonna walk you a really long way because I know that gets boring, when there’s nothing happening.

Then you’ve got the guys working over there on the boat.

You’ve got the horse having lunch.

I’ll be honest, our arrival here was a little rough.

We got here, we had started, we woke up at 3:30 in the morning to get, we were at Lac Rose and we had to get a bus back to Dakar to get on a, we got a ride back to Dakar to get on a bus by seven am.

We arrived here around almost one o’clock, and nothing was open for food. For whatever reason, we were having trouble getting lunch.

We hadn’t eaten all day hardly except for a few snacks.

And we were tired, and hot, and hungry, so it was a rough arrival yesterday.

And as I say, I’m just being honest. Sometimes it goes that way.

One of the things here that doesn’t always go well is the kids can
pretty much come up to you, if they say hi or anything they’re just asking you for money.

Which is probably my least favorite thing around here, happens a little bit all over

but here it’s been more pronounced.

I will say my first glance is, especially at this side of the river has been, it looks short of the river part and the fishing village part.

But this place looks a lot here.

Let me swing you around.

That’s a, just the road, along the side of our hotel.

It looks a lot like Mauritania,

And this is like the last stop before you get to the Mauritanian border.

So that completely makes sense, but if you read our blog posts @teamhazardridesagain.com,

because I was doing more blogging than vlogging then, I’m getting along a little better here.

They still have that, that no stress Senegal attitude here, so even when communication’s
a little challenging everyone’s nice and patient and we work it out, and they’re very good at
understanding language.

And we’ve got a nice little baby goat, got a lot of little baby goats

Tim and I actually always see it as a good sign, when there’s goats near our hotel.

We love hearing goats near our hotel. It’s a good sign, that’s a good neighborhood.

It’s active, but it also means it’s local.

We like cushy tourists stuff, once in a while.

We just came from a slightly cushy tourist place, because sometimes you need that kind of break.

But to be honest, ultimately, we actually like more local neighborhoods.

So this is just literally walking along the riverfront. I’ll slow down a little try and get it less shaky.

I, even having the tripod in that, oh they’re singing. Don’t know if you can hear it because I have the mic on.

They don’t always like being on film.

But they are in a touristy area so…

Eh

I could do it a little bit, but as I say this is also an obviously a, working area and…

So if you come up to Saint Louis, I’ll tell you that the distances are very short.

I had chosen when I chose hotels, I was looking at somewhere on the mainland
side and it’s like, oh you gotta go all the way across the bridge to get to the fun stuff.

And I didn’t realize that the distances were so short. So if you’re anywhere in
Saint Louis, the distances are very short.

The distances are nothing.

You know, it costs a buck to get from one side to the other,less than a buck, U.S of course.

But so, and it’s walkable.

That’s the thing is even if you didn’t wanna pay for a cab it’s walkable.

This is the far side, as I say, and this is more fishing village than touristy side.

It’s also not the mainland side. I think the mainland side is a little more or city

like, not heavy city though. I think I was expecting it to be a little closer to Dakar like a small
city, small version of it but it’s not. We’re gonna find out, I’m looking for some things.

And so when I go looking for them, we’ll see I know I’m sort of rambling,
but I’m not actually.

I’m the idea that the looking for…oh and horses and all that. You gotta watch out for the cow pies.

But like my sandals broke four, four years of heavy use in world travel in my sandals. My awesome Teva sandals broke.

I love Teva.

I’m not criticizing them for breaking. They’ve been through heck and back.

So I gotta see if I can find some epoxy to try and fix them. I also will buy a pair of
local sandals because I can probably get some fairly cheap to substitute.

I will say the other thing about Saint Louis is they do a horse cart ride around
old town, Saint Louis not on this on a, more comfortable horse cart but they do a, they do a, a tour ride around St. Louis.

We’re gonna do that. We’re gonna show you that live. I’m hoping to show that to you live. So watch out for that one.

I’m kind of just letting you look a little bit.

I said, I wasn’t gonna walk too far, but this is a new path to me. As I say, we just got in yesterday.

I managed to find us pizza last night, and hang on we got
traffic, we got traffic.

So we’re doing that and there’s a big bird sanctuary up here. It’s a little ways out, but it’s a tour group, a tour type thing where they have like they say at like a beach full of pelicans, and big birds and things that hopefully Tim will be able to see.

~Kid Interrupts~

So as I said, I’m talking to you and I’m sort of letting them think that I’m doing selfie as opposed us to the camera turn the other way. So you can get a good look at what it looks like around here.

And so that’s our two big things is to do the horse cart tour around main old town Saint Louis

and to go up to the big bird sanctuary and I hope to do live from the bird sanctuary, no promises. We may not have signal.

I should be able to do it from old town Saint Louis.

We’ll have videos on all of it ultimately.

So as you can see over there, the bridge the second bridge is just over there. So in the time that I’ve walked from one bridge to the other, you know, and I’m right there and I’m not gonna take you
all the way across with me. We’ll do that another day, I’ll show you the other side. I won’t take you across.

I’ll just show you the other side when we get there.

But I kind of wanted to give you first impressions. And this is a really interesting active town

and it’s a Saturday, so the roads are fairly active. And I always like to show you things when

they’re fairly active, It’s no fun to show you when there’s nothing going on.

Three point turn in a horse cart.

I do see some of the carts just transporting people, like local people.

And I’m not sure that the tour carts don’t do that sometimes too.

At this point I am going to flip the camera and do my sign off, and I know I’m not supposed to say

that because now everyone clicks off the video right now.

I’m just gonna say, thanks for joining me.

This has been a first look at Saint Louis.

Am I getting that horse in there?

Yeah, I’m getting the horse in there.

You can look at the horse too and there’s gonna be more stuff coming from here and I’m trying to get the other things edited, for all the other stuff we’ve been doing and all that good stuff.

So keep tuning in and check it out and we will see you next time.