From Luke..

An update freshly wrapped for the New Year.  Exciting things may happen tomorrow – including finally getting our car (more later) – but since we’re likely to rock it Daquiri style, and then ogle some Senegalese midget wrestling in a 60 000 stadium on New Year’s Day (if we get tickets), this is the best chance I have.

On the car: the ship arrived three days late. The crappy company that “organizes” this rally gave us terrible information on the cost and process.  Basically it’s been a total goat fuck, in the parlance of our times. But with a bit of gift giving – ’tis the season – our beautiful beast will be let loose imminently.

Eh, it could be worse.  We could be cowering in fear and lambasting our intelligence apparatus because somebody set his penis on fire on 1 out of 13 million US flights per year.

For Dakar and Senegal and so on – and how the sun started shining out of my arse I was so happy to get out of Morocco - you could read the blog, at the address below, or else I have handily copy and pasted it all below:

http://www.journeytothesouth.com

Whooaaa. I leave Morocco, get to Dakar, and all of a sudden: the sun shines; only some of the people are trying to cheat me; and I find a proper keyboard.  Not only that, but Mark has arrived in Dakar, the car is sitting in the port, and, providing ways and means can be found to get said car out of the port, the road shall be hit and hit hard very shortly.

Otherwise we are in Dakar.  The people are beutiful, dignified and vibrant; except the rich, who wear too much make-up and try to dress like the global elite.  The tourist touts are at least amusing and back off when asked.

There’s also a pretty standard cast of characters, who are fun in their very stereotypes: the rich Lebanese in their SUVs with their fat daughters; the potentates in security cavalcades; the internet cafe online daters / dirty e-mailers; the tourists like dead whales on the beaches; the local movers and shakers in tree-covered cafes; the Eastern Europeans doing god-knows-what; and a dash of sex tourists to complete the mix (interestingly, more white women seeking local men than vice versa).

Oh, and I saw the Western-most point of Africa.  Which was pretty cool.  It used to be an outcroping of rocks.  Now it’s an artfully constructed rocky pier that juts just a little further into the ocean.  It’s private, and part of a Club Med.  File under: “I’m not really into reflexive anti-commercial cultural declinism, but …”, next to the Burger King in a faux-medieval shop opposite the Great Mosque of Cordoba.

I have continued my stupid streak of forgetting the camera doohickey in the hotel when going to internet cafes, so still no photos.  But that does mean there’s going to be a feast fit for the gods, wrapped in fat and smoking from the charcoal, when that stupid streak finally ends.

We will keep you posted…

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