Day 7: Timbuktu, the city of 333 saints.
During the night the wind picked up and progressively buried us in sand. I can’t say I slept well at all. In the morning we had to dig our stuff out of the sand. The dune had even moved a bit. My ears, mouth and eyes were also packed with sand. But waking up on the sand dune at the edge of the Sahara Desert was one of the highlights of this trip.


(Caro & Rob waking up on a sand dune in the Sahara desert)


("Il n'y a pas de problème")

We pushed the cars to get going in the sand, and drove back to Timbuktu. After breakfast and showers it was time to do the tour of the city. It was also 42 degrees C. (109 degrees F). Timbuktu was a grand city in the past: the center of learning in West Africa. Now the population is a third of the size, mud buildings are crumbling, and the sand is moving in. It makes you think that nothing is forever. Timbuktu was a hub for trade when wares came across the desert (salt, kola nuts, slaves, ivory, cloths), now that things come through the ports (the French set this up), Timbuktu is no longer important. Crazy to think that something like this might happen to NYC! In Timbuktu we saw two of the old mosques, the library with old scriptures that came from all over the Muslim world, the houses of the explorers, men in long blue boubous,…



(Famille Touareg)


(Toubabou in Timbuktu)


(The great ancient city of Tombouctou: the people are moving out and the sand is moving in).

In the afternoon a pinasse drove us up the river to a spot where we might see hippos. We passed villages along the Niger River crowned by their mosques, pinasses moving slowly with large square sails, fishermen polling their way through the water… And we did see the hippos – they pop up their heads and twirl their ears.

(We're off to look for Hippos).