Greetings from Banjul

Very unexpectedly I find myself in The Gambia for at least the next 24 hours after the plane I was taking from Monrovia developed a communications problem (not one I could resolve) and the flight was abandoned last night just an hour and a half into the journey. The upside is that we were put up in a pretty good hotel and I spent the day by the pool. The Gambia lived up to all expectations. I can completely see why birdwatchers flock here – there were vultures and eagles roosting in trees in the hotel grounds, egrets wandering around the pool area. Alas, there were a few old English birds there as well. Yes, the other expectation The Gambia lived up to was the preponderance of British women sex tourists. Feeling distinctly uncomfortable and yet very curious, I put a couple of women and their “dates” under surveillance (I would have so loved to have been a spy). I managed to do a good 15 minutes of quality eavesdropping while they were changing money. It was all pretty tawdry – bottle blonde grandmothers with chipped nail polish and too tight clothes, handing over wads of cash to young Gambian men who were laughing and joking about the good time they were all going to have. The most jarring thing was that the grannies had west country accents – it was as if Jolene and Clarrie from The Archers had stolen the takings from The Bull and ran off for a bit of the other in Africa. Very unsettling.

All that said, I would still like to come back to The Gambia – dry heat, beautiful beaches and amazing wildlife. But I shall probably not come solo.