Leisurely start leaving Zebrabar, although it was my turn to keep the others waiting as I couldn't find my keys just as we were leaving. I started to panic that I had lost my keys in the soft sand and then realised that they were in the seat lock. We had to head back towards St. Louis to refuel which meant passing the corrupt police check again. Gert was leading the way so I signalled him him as we approached to slow right down to a crawl. Sure enough, we were pulled over and Gert correctly indicated right and stopped at the required point with me alongside him. It was the same cop as yesterday morning and he remembered me and told me I could go as he knew all my papers were in order. In fact he insisted that I move along so I rode the remaining 200 yards to the petrol station to fill up. A few minutes later Gert turned up and told us that he had been fined an astronomical Euro 50 for " not indicating for long enough". It reminded me of the old "Not the Nine O'Clock News" sketch where the racist policeman had fined the black man for "wearing a loud shirt in a built up area".
After that we headed south and with every mile it got hotter and hotter with the temperature reaching 44 degrees. Considering that we started well below freezing in the UK, this is a considerable temperature range in one adventure. It is also a credit to our riding gear that it has coped with both extremes.
Along the way the locals were all exceedingly friendly, with big beeming smiles and waves from all age groups. It was humbling to see people living in such poverty who could be so friendly and positive to visitors to their country who were obviously significantly more wealthy than them.
We ended up at the Relais Hotel in Kaolack in Southern Senegal where they had a total of three rooms left, being two doubles and one triple so we all just fitted in here. It was a wonderful place with air-conditioned rooms, cold beers, a swimming pool (complete with drowned lizard in deep end) and an excellent restaurant. Gert had managed to pick up a nail in his rear tyre so he had to repair a puncture whilst the rest of us tried out the swimming pool.
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