Senegal river ferry east of Rosso ?

[tiffernine]

Hi folks,

is there any possibility to cross the senegal river east of rosso by ferry with a motorcycle (i.e. near Kaedi) ?

Thanks for your advice.

Alfred

[Matt Roach]

We crossed with two motorcycles at Bogue in January this year. There was no ferry, but there you can cross by pirogue.

There is a police station about 10 metres back from the waters edge on the Mauritanian side to have passports stamped out. There is no police / immigration / customs on the Senegalese side, so you will have to stop at the nearest town. Because we arrived on a holiday we had difficulty finding anyone to stamp passports, so we ended up never being stamped into Senegal.

There is also no road on the Senegalese side, just dirt tracks through the bush until you eventually rejoin the main road heading west to Podor.

cheers

[sadoblazo]

come on..... are you sure you wanna miss out on rosso's folklore?

[AndySabb]

Rosso is fun. You arrive at about 4 p.m. Army Officer says he is taking your Passport wait with the car. NO NO NO - I say in broken french where passport goes I go. So I follow my passport to several different rooms. By this time Jan (my wife) who is 5 foot 4 (small) joins me and the kids mind the car.

Evetually an argument breaks out betweens Customs and Police about whether or not we should pay a bribe (they are shouting this in french expecting me not to understand, but we can). The Customs think we are a family with children (4) and we should not pay a bribe. A huge 6 foot 6 (over 2 metres) police officer joins in with a rather large machine gun.

He then decides to shout at Jan that she should pay a bribe - she looks him in the face and says:

"Don't you dare shout a me I am a guest in your country, you must treat me with respect."

Police officer looks startled and all shouting stops and all conversations. Police officer skulls away quickly. Passports etc get stamped and we paid nothing.

At the other side they tried to rip us off - however, we employed a fixer for about $10. He sorted it and we ended up paying about $5 for all our documentation.

It was fun.

Andy

P.S. Morroco and Maurtania bound in July and August (I shall not be taking a Carnet for Mauritania - I suspect you still don't need it).