Senegal: Then and Now
When is a pink lake not a pink lake? Before addressing this riddle, I should probably clarify a couple of things. When I say pink lake, I am not referring to the ones in Australia, Canada or Azerbaijan . My focus is on Lake Retba aka Lac Rose in Senegal. This is because I was recently spending some time in Dakar and thought it might make for a worthy outing. A Google maps search revealed it was less than a 30 minute drive so I thought it was strange when the hotel concierge booked our driver for 3 hours. Maybe there was a lot to see along the way. The truth is that Google maps has no idea what Senegalese roads or traffic look like. In theory, I guess you could cover twenty kilometers in 20 minutes or so but that theory would have to discount dirt roads, traffic and the occassional goat. It took us about an hour to arrive at Lac Rose's shores but I had seen enough vibrant Instagram pictures to know that it would be worth it.