Timbuktu and around
Main Street in Timbuktu
Famous mosque
Tuareg Tent - our camp for one nite
view of Timbuktu
Shared Taxi - Eleven hour trip on bad roads with 10 people
Shared Taxi - Eleven hour trip on bad roads with 10 people
Timbuktu is not a pretty town. It's all the same color - tan or dirt colored. There is a paved main street, but all others are sand. In one place the road crew was digging the one paved road out from under a layer of sand that completely hid the pavement.
Trashy is also a good word to describe the town, but this word - trashy - describes all the towns in Mali. The buildings are either stone, brought in from the Sahara; or adobe made in town. Many of them are then covered in mud stucco. We stayed with Omar at his house. It had four foam sofas - just a block of foam covered in fabric - no back or legs , and 4 patio chairs. That was it. All the furnishings in the whole house - except for of course - a TV with a satellite. We watched WBA wrestling! We ate dinner at Omar's from one large serving platter, and all of us ate with our fingers - even me and Dan. Dinner was blackeyed peas, little chunks of tough beef, and a melon, all mixed together. It was good, and I think we did real good.
We also went to the Desert for a nite and Dan rode a camel - everyone has to that once in his life!
We stayed at a Tuareg (tribe of people found all over the Sahara) family tent area, the tents here are made of straw mats, and maybe 30 x 20 feet feet in area. There were two women and several children at the site, the men were off in the desert somewhere. The women's kitchen consisted of a little charcoal cook stove, a pot, a few utensils, and that was about it.
For dinner in the desert we had our best meal so far. It was white rice and pieces of beef. Very tasty, with just the right amount of sand to make it a little gritty, like every thing else.
We slept under the stars, and the sand is a very comfortable bed. They gave us a mat, we had our own sleeping bag - a sheet sewed at the bottom.
The next morning , back in town, we started looking for a way out of Timbuktu. At one shared taxi stand we met 7 other Americans! 5 were peace corp workers recently evacuated from Guinea, and two were men sailing a boat from Israel to Florida,. They had left their boat in the Canary Islands and flown down to west Africa for a little tour around.
We all were able to negotiate a 4- wheel drive Land Rover for a fairly decent price to take us back to Mopti, 240 miles away. A 7 hour trip. 10 people including the driver.
We got to Mopti at 10 last nite, it was an Eleven hour trip on a really bad dirt road and worse paved road. The dirt road, most of the way was of the washboard finish, when it wasn't full of potholes and just plain big holes full of water. It had rained the nite before, so at least it wasn't HOT and dusty.
We're resting up today - getting ready for more African travel.
later
Johnny
Trashy is also a good word to describe the town, but this word - trashy - describes all the towns in Mali. The buildings are either stone, brought in from the Sahara; or adobe made in town. Many of them are then covered in mud stucco. We stayed with Omar at his house. It had four foam sofas - just a block of foam covered in fabric - no back or legs , and 4 patio chairs. That was it. All the furnishings in the whole house - except for of course - a TV with a satellite. We watched WBA wrestling! We ate dinner at Omar's from one large serving platter, and all of us ate with our fingers - even me and Dan. Dinner was blackeyed peas, little chunks of tough beef, and a melon, all mixed together. It was good, and I think we did real good.
We also went to the Desert for a nite and Dan rode a camel - everyone has to that once in his life!
We stayed at a Tuareg (tribe of people found all over the Sahara) family tent area, the tents here are made of straw mats, and maybe 30 x 20 feet feet in area. There were two women and several children at the site, the men were off in the desert somewhere. The women's kitchen consisted of a little charcoal cook stove, a pot, a few utensils, and that was about it.
For dinner in the desert we had our best meal so far. It was white rice and pieces of beef. Very tasty, with just the right amount of sand to make it a little gritty, like every thing else.
We slept under the stars, and the sand is a very comfortable bed. They gave us a mat, we had our own sleeping bag - a sheet sewed at the bottom.
The next morning , back in town, we started looking for a way out of Timbuktu. At one shared taxi stand we met 7 other Americans! 5 were peace corp workers recently evacuated from Guinea, and two were men sailing a boat from Israel to Florida,. They had left their boat in the Canary Islands and flown down to west Africa for a little tour around.
We all were able to negotiate a 4- wheel drive Land Rover for a fairly decent price to take us back to Mopti, 240 miles away. A 7 hour trip. 10 people including the driver.
We got to Mopti at 10 last nite, it was an Eleven hour trip on a really bad dirt road and worse paved road. The dirt road, most of the way was of the washboard finish, when it wasn't full of potholes and just plain big holes full of water. It had rained the nite before, so at least it wasn't HOT and dusty.
We're resting up today - getting ready for more African travel.
later
Johnny
posted by Johnny at
1:48 AM
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