In order to get to Siguiri, we had to fly JHB to Dakar, Senegal on the western edge of the continent (one of the hotels is right on this point and myself and one of the other guys walked up there the night we flew out, unfortunately it was too dark to take pictures, but the hotel looks like the Lost City… and that makes three of the four most “points” of Africa I’ve been on, just North to go now…)
Dakar has a very mixed heritage and influences, between Mediterranean and Arabic, as can be seen in the architecture. Although it is in the northern part of West Africa, and well into the Sahara zone it is very temperate, with the climate influenced by the Atlantic. Temps fluctuated in the low to mid twenties while we were there, and humidity is very low. It is one of the most pleasant places I have ever been, I’d certainly consider going there for a holiday, although the flight from JHB is a long one. The place is neat, clean, quiet… very un-African!
The first hotel I stayed in had a restaurant on the roof, and the views were 300 degrees and stunning.
Now the sunrises and sunsets in this part of Africa are just indescribable… as you will see, I assume because of the desert dust in the air…
This was sunrise over Dakar on the morning before I flew to Guinea
This was sunset the previous evening over the Atlantic
The coastline in Dakar is very rocky, where we were anyway, and supplied a lot of rockpools for me to explore. Plenty of interesting fish and other aquatic invertebrates, unfortunately my camera doesn’t take such good shots of things under the water, and since I have plenty more to post, I’ll skip all those.
Birdlife wasn’t huge, but on the shore I found a black headed heron and some Ruddy Turnstones looking for critters to eat.
And there were plenty of Hooded vultures flying about, with of course numerous crows.
As far as herps went, all I could see was a lot of these Agamids on the walls
Right, off to Guinea… I requested an aisle seat, was instead given a window seat… Airlines these days are pretty unreliable!
We can skip the images of the “airport” on the other end, Siguiri as a town is pretty much what you would expect. I missed a wonderful photo opportunity as we entered the town on one of the main roads, with a pair of hooded vultures feeding off a donkey carcass under a sign that said “Siguiri”. It pretty much summed up what the rest of the place was like…
Fuel station
The countryside as I mentioned earlier
There were a lot of interesting termite mounds around the mine village, from around 30cm high to a metre or so
Some shots from within the mine operational area
The Baobab trees on the site all pretty much looked like this, very different from ours, although they are the very same species (all Baobabs on the African continent – and the small handful on an island off Brazil – are the same species, the other 4-5 species being found only on Madagascar)
Although very hot and very arid, there was a lot of water in the small waterways on the mine, these all feed into the Niger river, which runs through Siguiri town, unfortunately I did not get a chance to get there while I was here. Plenty of water lilies and a lot of the amphibs I showed previously were found in these.
There are obviously a lot of fish in the waters, as the locals use their nuts from dugout canoes.
The mine village had a lot of Mango trees (amongst others) which were chock-full of what I think were Wahlberg's epauletted fruit bat,
Epomophorus wahlbergi, and they all started calling at about 16h30 every evening until well into the early hours of the morning. Not an unpleasant sound, but quite a cacophony when they all got started. They would beat their wings quite frenetically while they called.
This area in particular was one of the areas quite significantly affected during the West African Ebola outbreak, although it started in the south of Guinea, and was transmitted via humans into this region, it would have been interesting to note whether these bats were carriers at all, especially as you couldn’t walk very far without passing under a bunch of them roosting.
On one of our early morning excursions (an early mountainbike ride to one of the outlying camps 32km away through the bush) I came across this interesting plant, I assume some kind of lily? I have yet to identify it. I t had no scent, I assume though that it is pollinated either by flies or moths.
I think that’s enough for one day, will put up some more tomorrow.