Yesterday I endured a highly stressful day reviewing Dakar's beautiful Meridien President hotel at Almadies, Africa's most westerly point. To make sure my readers are given up to date information on where to stay in Dakar, I spent many hours testing the water quality of the pool, scrutinising the views from various parts of the gorgeous beach-side complex including from the jacuzzi, and seeing if the towels were as fluffy as they should be. I can report that all seemed to be up to a good standard. So my swiming yesterday involved about 7 lengths of the 25 metre pool, not really a 'training' day then, but so enjoyable, clean, peaceful and no pumping Senegalese pop music, which is what we get at the public pool and which makes the experience of swimming 1.5km even more stressful.
Today was the End-of-Week-One sea swim. I'm not scared of under tows, rips, currents, drowning or sharks, but I am afraid of sea weed touching my toes or of a small fish nibbling at my elbow. I also don't like swimming when the water is full of goat hair. Ngor beach is Dakar's Blackpool Beach, except there's a densely populated fishing village at one end of the bay and there they believe that the beach is for livestock and dumping rubbish, because, well, that's where they've always done it. The fact that the bay has now become a big hang-out for tourists and locals doesn't meant that villagers have stopped giving their goats baths in the water.
After staying out until 4 this morning listening to a great Senegalese-French jazz band (called Moussa Diouf), Cecilia, Alistair, Naomi and I convened at Ngor beach for our first sea swim. Alistair had been out drinking until 5, apparently, and has also done no training for it, but his enthusiasm overcame both of those small obstacles and we were very happy to have him with us. Cecilia is my swimming buddy and she was also wearing a swimming hat so that I didn't feel like the only idiot on the beach. Naomi was charged with carrying the bags across on the pirogue (which ran out of petrol half-way across so that we almost beat her across).
And so we set off, after much discussion about the best place to cross, eventually choosing the village end of the beach, and the goat-washing end. I kept my mouth well closed until we were out half way across and the water became clear and lovely.
After being afraid of the fish and the 700 metre swim, it really wasn't a big deal and only took 18 minutes. On the other side we had lunch in a lovely breezy cafe and decided to swim back as well. My gorgeous red bonnet split before I'd launched off on the return leg (even though it was only the third time I've used it), so I am now without-hat but tomorrow I'm off down to City Sport to buy a new hat, swimming costume and flippers (for my next challenge- body boarding).
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