Location: Banjul, Gambia

Technically, Gambia is called “The Gambia.” Pop quiz – what other country has “The” in its official name? See the end of this post. Other thing – Gambia is completely surrounded by Senegal (except the ocean).

Our local guide said when Gambia gained independence there was a lot of confusion with Zambia, so they added a “The” to the name to help difference from them. I don’t know about that, but it’s a good story.

Strange thing: my phone did not get service in Gambia for about four hours, but then worked fine for the rest of the day. Huh.

We docked in the capital, Banjul, which is a very old town and is quite crowded. I signed up for a nature tour, so we jumped in a bus and drove out to a local river dock and spent over an hour going up stream bird watching. We saw many Great White Egrets and Pink-backed Pelicans.

We arrived up river to an oyster village. And I mean that – a large industry is “cooking” oyster shells to create oyster shell dust for use as cement. Even the wharf was made of shells and shell dust.

Here a local tree was covered with painted notices, which our guide called “Gambia Internet.”

Afterwards we jumped back on the buses to visit the Abuko Nature Reserve. On the way we had to pull over as several companies of Army trainees marched/ran by. That brought me back a couple decades…

The Reserve was fine, but it’s hard to compete with the other ports we’ve seen during this world cruise. There were some flowers:

and termite mounds

And cool vine enclosed trees.

There were also:

• Saba Senegal Fruit
• Red Colobus Monkey
• Hooded Vulture

Pop quiz answer: The Bahamas.