Niokola Koba Park – December 2008

On 19th December 2008, a small group of volunteers, including myself, set out for a mini adventure in the form of a short visit to Niokola Koba National Park in Senegal. Originally we had planned to cross Senegal and visit the hills of Guinea Conakry, but the Land Rover we would be using was becoming increasingly unreliable and we decided it would be safer not to be too ambitious.
The trip had first been suggested by myself and Venus in October and then, once Lebi had confirmed his interest, Greg signed up. After that, Venus and Lebi put word out about the trip and collected expressions of interest (and deposits towards the cost of the fuel) from other friends of theirs down in Kombo. Unfortunately, in the week before departure both Greg and Venus had to pull out due to important meetings being arranged (and rearranged) at work. The trip was suddenly in jeopardy as there wouldn’t be enough people to cover the costs. Luckily, Jacqui and her friend Lisa stepped in at the last minute and the expedition was back on again. The final team list being Lebi, Tracey, Susan, Jacqui, Lisa, June and myself.
The Kombo volunteers arranged to meet up and travel up to Kerewan in the Land Rover on the morning of Friday 19th December, collecting the Kerewan contingent around lunchtime and then heading for a first night stopover in Basse. Venus had bought bags of water and enough rice to keep us going for a few days, the Land Rover had been loaded and everything had been made ready to go. Apart, that is, from Lebi who, being from the Philippines needed a visa to enter Senegal and it hadn’t been issued! Numerous anxious texts flew back and forth between worried prospective adventurers as people waited at the Senegalese Embassy in the hope that the visa would be issued at the last minute. It wasn’t and by around 1pm a decision as to what to do had to be taken.
Lebi selflessly informed us that he would accompany us to the border with as many of his identity documents as possible (his passport was stuck somewhere in the visa application department!) and try his luck at getting through. If he was unsuccessful, he would stay in Basse and I would drive the Land Rover to the park. Nobody felt very comfortable about this, but the only other option was to cancel the whole trip so we decided to go for it.
We were already several hours behind schedule by now so of course the Landy chose to develop a flat tyre near the ferry terminal in Barra!
Having had it repaired, it was then a mad dash up to Kerewan to collect June and I and then, hopefully make the ferry crossing at Janjanbureh before nightfall.
Having worn out the concrete pacing up and down the verandah, June and I finally boarded the vehicle and set off around 5pm.
After the trials of the day, things finally began to look up. Until we got as far as Farafenni, about 35 miles down the road, when we had another flat tyre. We changed it quickly but as I was throwing the flat tyre up to Lebi on the roof rack I managed to drop it on my wrist, smashing the pin in my watchstrap. Undeterred, I jumped back in and we were off once more.
It was already well after dark by the time we reached the ferry onto the island and it was clear by now that there was no way we were going to make Basse so we booked into a hotel in Janjanbureh. We had dinner and a Julbrew, watched a little drumming and dancing and turned in early so we could make a good start in the morning.
We left the hotel around 9am and managed to get all the way to Bansang before we had our next flat tyre. This enforced halt provided an ideal opportunity for breakfast so we raided a streetside nebbe stall.
Suitably revitalised by the magic spicy bean paste, we headed for the border, driving the long and bumpy route through Basse and Fatoto.
After a scenic little detour through some villages at the very eastern end of the country, we found the border. The border post was an impressive brick shed with 3 border guards busily engaged in eating lunch. We waited whilst they finished and then presented our documents. Everyone, including Lebi, was stamped through without any fuss (I’m still not sure how it happened) and we drove into Senegal – my second African country!
It was another couple of hours’ drive to the gates of Niokola Koba, and we managed it without breaking down once!
In order to enter the park, tourists have to engage the services of an official guide. Ours turned out to be a very pleasant and knowledgeable gentleman who unfortunately had a name which I could never get my head, let alone my tongue, around.
As we drove through the deepening darkness we were treated to our first real wildlife. A troop of baboons crossed the road in front of us! We stopped and watched – so did they. Some of them climbed into the trees and began throwing twigs and nuts at us so we decided to leave. Over the next few miles we caught glimpses of more baboons and monkeys, and we almost ran over a small jackal.
The excitement proved too much for the Land Rover and, as we negotiated a rough section of track, a harsh grating noise suddenly came through the open windows and we stopped moving. The engine was running fine but nothing seemed to be reaching the wheels. I shrewdly suspected that there was a problem with the drivetrain and suggested trying the diff lock. It worked and we were able to limp through the park to the ‘Camp de Lion’.
Our little faces dropped when we reached the camp: reed huts with no water and no electricity. We were tired and hungry and the place looked terrible. Action man Lebi didn’t bat an eyelid however and set about gathering wood for a fire. Camp staff turned up with a table, some chairs and a few candles and suddenly the place was transformed into a rather attractive camp in the African bush – exactly as imagined from watching TV programmes. We ordered dinner and a Julbrew and settled back to chat and listen to the rather strange sound of hippos grunting in the river just behind the camp.
Following a pretty good night’s sleep, we were up early and everyone walked the 100m down to the river. The sun was just rising over the trees and mist was rising from the surface of the river. It was brilliant – I was standing in a photo from National Geographic feeling like some great explorer or naturalist. When the guide arrived and announced he’d heard a lion in the distance, that was it, I actually became David Attenborough!
We packed up the Land Rover and set off, the guide pointing us down non-existent tracks through the scrub with Lebi clutching the steering wheel and closing his eyes as we nudged our way through the tall grass. At one point we all had to jump out for the poor old Landy to claw it’s way up a short steep bank, the badly-tuned engine throwing out so much smoke we were nearly arrested for gassing all the animals.
The rest of the morning became a blur of driving along and then suddenly stopping as the guide pointed out animals and birds that I’d grown up knowing as the stars of TV wildlife programmes – and here I was, actually seeing them with my own eyes – in Africa – in a Land Rover!
Although Niokola Koba doesn’t have all the big game found in some regions of Africa, it does have a few lions, leopards and elephants as well as numerous hippos, crocodiles and antelope. The birdlife is also rather spectacular.
Unfortunately we didn’t manage to see the lions or leopards or elephants, but we did hear a lion on several occasions and found a fresh footprint. We did see baboons by the hundred though, and many warthogs, several varieties of antelope and another jackal.
In the early afternoon we arrived at the Hotel Simenti and decided to stop for drink and a bite to eat. We checked our funds and decided that we could also afford to spend the night there. When we were sitting in the bar we noticed that Lebi was missing. We eventually tracked him down in the hotel garage where he’d employed the services of the mechanics to diagnose and fix the problem with the Land Rover’s drivetrain. It turned out that the splines on the end of the driveshaft had stripped and the shaft was just spinning in the hub. The enterprising chaps simply welded the shaft into the hub and reassembled it all with a lump hammer.
Later in the afternoon we took a motorised pirogue trip along the River Gambia. Another brilliant experience on which I bagged my first ever sight of a hippo, as well as some great close ups of crocodiles and even more birds.
My only regret was that I couldn’t get any good pictures as my fantastic, professional quality, high resolution, ‘wakes you up in the morning with a cup of tea’ camera was so expensive I couldn’t afford a long lens to go with it! For those who want to look at other people’s pictures in bird guides, I saw on that one short trip along the river: hadada ibis; African fish eagle; pied kingfisher; blue-breasted kingfisher; woodland kingfisher; woolly-necked stork; little bee-eater; red-throated bee-eater; fork-tailed drongo; Senegal thick-knee; hamerkop; Egyptian plover; white-crowned plover; western grey plantain-eater; Abyssinian roller.
That evening, half the group ate in the hotel restaurant and the other half – including me – had a campfire culinary moment in the car park.
The next day was Monday and Jacqui and Lisa wanted to get back to Kombo that evening. Someone rather optimistically calculated that they could make the last ferry if we left the park at lunchtime and so we had another great morning exploring more of the park.
By the time we dropped our guide off at the park gates and began the long journey home, it was 1pm and it looked doubtful for the ferry. Lebi put his foot down though and we bounced along at a good rate of knots.
Sadly, we bounced a little too much at one point as we lost all the luggage and the spare wheel from the roof rack! Nearly an hour was spent searching the verges for pots and pans, and we’d almost given up on the wheel when a helpful passer-by discovered it in the middle of a field about 200m from where it had left the roof!
We reached the village where we’d crossed into Senegal without further incident and headed off down the track to find the border post. Somehow, we must have taken a wrong fork somewhere and we wandered around in the wilderness for quite a while before we arrived in a small village. We asked where we were and discovered that we’d crossed back into The Gambia without even noticing.
It was now fairly obvious that we wouldn’t make the ferry, but Lebi was determined to do his best for the ladies and pushed the Land Rover so hard along the pothole-littered road that bits started to hurl themselves off. First the speedo packed in, and then, following an encounter with a particularly fine pothole, the rear lights and all the indicators decided they’d had enough.
Lebi merely gripped the wheel tighter and forged on into the twilight.
Suddenly, shortly before we reached Janjanbureh, Lebi pulled to the side of the road and announced the clutch wasn’t working. He reassured me that it was an old problem and he just needed to top up the reservoir with fluid. We managed this by torchlight, but found the clutch still didn’t work. We probably had air trapped in the system, but we had no tools to bleed it properly so we simply hit things with large spanners and pumped the pedal until large bubbles began to appear in the reservoir. Eventually they stopped appearing and the clutch had a bit of feel to it again.
Another few miles further on and the same thing happened again. The bottle of clutch fluid we had was already two thirds used and we were starting to get a little twitchy.
We made the ferry onto the island and then dashed over to catch the one off at the other side. The clutch was getting worse and the gears were becoming increasingly difficult for Lebi to change.
As we left the ferry, Lebi worked his way up to 4th gear and then announced that the clutch was completely gone and that he would drive all the way in 4th.
We bowled along quite merrily like that for some time – and then we came across a police checkpoint. I was wondering how Lebi would cope with stopping and restarting the Land Rover with no clutch, but I needn’t have worried, he simply slowed down as far as he could in 4th and drove straight past the amazed (and armed) policeman shouting, “NGO. No clutch!” in a Philippine accent. Now I like a bit of excitement in my life, but driving through armed checkpoints at night in an unlit Land Rover is probably taking things a bit too far. Luckily I was in the front with Lebi and was able to console myself by reasoning that, should the police open fire, the people in the back would probably stop the bullets reaching me!
As it happened, the shooting never started. Neither did it at the next checkpoint we hurtled through.
At Kaur, we faced a more serious problem: Tracy had to stop to pick up some clothes from her house and there was no way Lebi could slow down enough for her to jump out, run to her house, collect her things and jump back in. He had to stop.
We poured the last drops of the clutch fluid into the reservoir and pumped the pedal. Nothing happened. Lebi crawled underneath and, by the light of the torch on someone’s phone, discovered that the fluid was pouring out faster than we could pour it in.
The Kaur police vehicle arrived on the scene and fortunately it turned out that Tracy knew the officer driving it. He did a quick check to see if he could do anything before announcing that we should drive it, without a clutch, all the way to Banjul. He recommended that we didn’t stop for police checks and said that, as we had NGO plates, we should be alright.
Lebi had never driven without a clutch before, but, thanks to owning a disastrous succession of dodgy vehicles in my youth, I had.
I started the Land Rover in gear and we were on our way again. I admit there were several slightly iffy gear changes, but overall I don’t think I performed too badly considering I hadn’t driven anything with 4 wheels for nearly 5 months, let alone something with no clutch.
The highlight of the drive was picking my way through the pedestrian strewn streets of Farafenni, negotiating a roundabout and a couple of junctions without stopping.
We reached Kerewan about 11pm and I rolled the Land Rover down the banking into Furut’s compound, announcing that I would be travelling no further that night. Lebi said there were enough empty rooms for the Kombo-ites to stay overnight. Their disappointment at not making it back to Kombo was attenuated by their relief at having made it as far as they had in one piece.
June and I picked up our cases and headed off down the sandy roads of Kerewan to our compound. We were exhausted, dirty and hungry, but we still couldn’t stop talking about our adventures.

PS – all the above was written late at night and has not been proof read or checked through in any way. Any grammatical or spelling errors you may find don’t really exist and are simply the figment of your own imagination.