Mid-Atlantic Exploration: Dakar, Senegal and Lake Retba

Right after breakfast, I took a trip out to Lake Retba. We drove through the countryside and through busy outlying suburban areas with lots of traffic and bustle. There were horse carts and trucks fighting over road space, roadside stalls selling fruit and housewares, and a lot of foot traffic. Women in colorful wraps were carrying all manner of objects on their heads while weaving through the crowds.

A busy Friday morning

Lake Retba, known as the Pink Lake, is actually more of a rust color.

The local version of a food truck.

We made it to Lake Retba and transferred to old four-wheel drive land rovers. The lake is known as the Pink Lake because of the color produced by algae blooms. However, it really looks more like dirty rust. Hundreds of boats are used to paddle into the middle of the shallow lake and dig for salt, which is then brought back to shore, dried in big piles, and eventually bagged for export. Aside from workers, there were kids and goats playing in the salt piles and a constant stream of women with baskets of fruit or souvenirs on their heads trying to sell you something.

The Fulani village was full of well-behaved children and goats.

We left the village and drove through a field of tall sand dunes that eventually opened up onto a huge stretch of Atlantic beach. The beach stretched further than we could see in both directions. It was really beautiful except for the line of plastic trash at the high tide mark that stretched into infinity along with the beach. We had a fun fast drive down the beach in the land rovers and then stopped to take some photos.

Riding a 40-year-old land rover held together by rust through the local dunes.

To get to an amazing stretch of beach.