January 31, 2024 – The Finish
Feb 13th, 2024 by rallyadmin
Disembarking the ferry goes much more smoothly than I expected. As soon as the front ramp on the ferry drops, the foot passengers bolt for the shore. (They probably are in the usual day to day hurry, not the sense of relief of escaping a sinking ship… just sayin’).
Almost immediately, the crew starts releasing the vehicles in a very orderly manner. All in all, the ferry crossing is surprisingly efficient if you don’t count the ticketing procedure and if you luck out on the schedule. There are horror stories of people waiting for up to 8 hours to get on the ferry. I suspect that Sam Jobe’s influence made our crossing such an easy and efficient event. You mileage may vary.
Needless to say, once on terra firma, all that efficiency talk is meaningless. The landing area is narrow and crowded by our ferry’s vehicles disembarking and the next crossing’s vehicles queued to board the ferry and almost immediately traffic is snarled to a stop. I see a space to jump out of line and make it to the exit and we’re on the road to our final stop, the finish at the Bamboo Village.
There is, of course, a problem waiting at the Bamboo Village hotel. Isn’t there always? The hotel has canceled all of our room reservations. While we were at Senegal exit customs, Clemo received a call telling him that the hotel had canceled our rooms and given them to passengers on a Tui Fly jet that had canceled it’s departure from Banjul. This is much more than an inconvenience. Potential riot comes to mind. This will definitely test that British reserve and stiff-upperlip-ness that the Brits are so famous for.
Tui is a German steep discount airline along the model of RetchAir or UglyJet. Their initial fare price is extremely, even ludicrously, low. But anything beyond the fare, like a reserved seat, a checked bag or a carry on bag is an added cost. Even having a boarding pass printed at the airport counter can be as much as $125 added cost. Unless you are traveling naked, all the addons drive the actual price up to and sometimes higher than a standard fare ticket. Luckily, you get the humiliation for free.
We had heard that there was no aviation fuel available at the Banjul airport and that flights departing were having to make unscheduled stops after departure at Dakar or Agadir to get fuel in order to complete their flights. This has caused serious connection problems but this is just another wrinkle in the smooth running of a trip to third world countries. Patience, patience, patience.
We have an arrival ceremony and dinner that night still scheduled for the Bamboo Village hotel. We just don’t have any rooms. The good news is that Sam Jobe has made us reservations at another hotel not far from the Bamboo Village that is supposedly a big upgrade compared to the Bamboo Village.
Clemo is somewhat relieved but he still hasn’t informed the group. He is livid to say the least but things will work out. They always do and Sam will make things right. He always does.
Pinky and I end up leading the group on the last leg of this epic journey. We exit the dock area and find out way to the main road that runs through the heart of Banjul. This road has been under construction for years and it’s still not finished. Fortunately, there’s not much traffic and though we seem to have lost our following ducklings, we make excellent time to the hotel.
We are the first to finish. We stop and Pinky jumps out to take a picture of the LandRover driving under the finish banner. We pull into the hotel parking area and we are immediately met by the hotel manager who is apologizing profusely. He thinks that I am Clemo and he says that he will make it up to us by giving us a free beer as we arrive in the hotel parking lot. I tell him that I am not Clemo but he keeps apologizing. I keep drinking the free beer.
The arrival festival of Gambian drummers and dancers is in full force and the rest of our cars start to arrive. The group knows now that our reservations have been canceled but nothing is said and the free beer starts to run freely. The therapeutic properties of free beer are astounding.
As the cars arrive, we get arrival photos of each with some excited finishers. The three women in the group, Cate, Sophie and Elaine, all pose for a hilariously vampy “chicks finish” photo. Beers all the way around.
Because we have arrived late in the afternoon, the welcome dinner begins soon after the last cars arrive. The hotel manager, Omar, tries to smooth the ruffled group feathers but he doesn’t make much progress. “We will do much better next year.” “We will not be back next year!”
The dinner, however, is quite good and the free beer keeps flowing. There are speeches from the Gambians who are instrumental is distributing the proceeds from the auto auction. Sam welcomes us and announces that he has secured reservations at the Bakajadi Hotel a bit down the road from where we are having dinner.
The dinner ends and we move out to the Bakajadi. It’s dark and when we get to the new hotel, there is some confusion parking our cars. Then there is confusion finding the entrance to the hotel. But they have rooms and they are at a discount (thank you, Sam). Even in the dark the hotel looks lovely and a big improvement on the Bamboo Village.
Unlike the Bamboo Village experience last year, there isn’t any drama checking in. In a few moments we have a room key and we are in the best room we’ve been in on the entire trip. With working air conditioning.
We get settled and most of us end up in the bar for a rather long, end-of-trip party. Everyone is in a great mood and feeling quite accomplished. Which they should. It’s been a 4,000+ mile trip with a wide gamut of problems and successes and we’ve all made it to the end. The group did whatever was necessary for everyone make it to the end, from the wounded LandRaver to the Volvo with the cracked oilpan. The seemingly endless sand extractions are now a distant memory. Beer flows supreme. Smiles all around.
Obi-wan