Senegalese border – no problem

From Kayes we moved on towards the Senegalese border. Lots of Malian trucks were on the road which was more or less ok. Border formalities on Malian side were very quick: handing over the TIP, filling out some books and stamping our passports. On the Senegalese side, in Kidira, it took a little bit longer for 2 reasons: 1st – for getting the passavent (TIP) for our car we had to visit the customs office situated behind the main building. It was raining heavily the night before and the whole area around the border post buildings was a muddy slimy swamp, where we had to hop from one stone to the other – we felt a little bit like in the Rwenzori Mountains. Luckily, we managed the whole trip without falling into the dirty water. 2nd – we still needed our visa for Senegal. This used to be a very complicated issue and some time ago even made the Senegalese tourist industry collapse to nearly zero. Seeing that the tourist figures are declining, they changed after they had nearly no more of these milk cows: nowadays you can turn up at certain border posts equipped with highly sophisticated machinery and you’ll get the visa immediately. This super machinery was stored in the main immigration office in the town center of Kidira. This was not easy to find, and we had to go back to the border to ask for more detailed directions. Finally we found it. The highest ranking official in the building started his laptop and the connected machinery, we had to give some finger prints (ours or the ones of the watchman outside or you could just paint them – all was acceptable) and hand over a bundle of banknotes – but we got a receipt for the handing-over ceremony, got a sticker in the passport and a stamp on the sticker. And – that’s it.