this past weekend (cont.)

Woke up early Sunday morning in our little hotel. Its was similar to a french bread n' breakfast. Being that the country is francophone, our English, we soon discovered, would not get us far. None of the staff spoke english, so our collective knowledge of french and wolof was utilized constantly. Soon pictures will be put up that will go along with this blog to give you an idea of what I will be talking about. The island is small, you can walk from end to end in less then 30min. It has only one beach, and the rest of the island is rocky with a section of soaring cliffs at least 100ft high. Renee and I spent the first half of the day exploring the coastline of one side of the island. We walked on the rocks about half way around the island, sometimes scaling some sweet boulders and basically just "scrambling" for a few hours. After lunch, it was adventures with the locals. Walking around, using french and wolof to communicate with the local artists. I was surprised as to how much french i actually understood when locals talked to us. Everyone living on the island is used to tourists, mostly french speaking tourists though. I found that communication consisted of them talking to me in french and myself responding in wolof. Senegalese wolof is different from gambian wolof in that senegalese wolof is influenced by french whereas gambian wolof is influenced by english. Leads to a little confusion but we mostly got by. Monday was spent in a similar fashion, walking around the entire island, swimming a wee bit at the little beach and doing some touristy type activities (consisting of buying arts n' crafts for you kids back home). The trip home was a lot less stressful and even boring in fact.