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Saturday, January 23, we hustled out of camp in hopes of seeing some of the rarer beasts. We did get a look at a Hippotrague (a big antelope) and a few buffalo. We never did see the endangered Elan de Derby, a.k.a. Western Giant Eland, but I didn't expect to. I only mention it because it is shown on the "Africa Threatened" map by National Geographic which I'd been carrying around for thousands of miles. No elephants or lions, either. We did see more rocky looking termite toadstools on barren flats.

We drove through about a hundred yards of dense rushes that towered over our rovers, brushing strongly against us as if to hold us back.

Amidst the generally rocky harsh terrain was a gullied area with dense stands of bamboo.

Along flat barren stretches were some small yellow flower growing close to the ground with little if any supporting stems or leaves.

Heading north, we soon reached a well-paved road, the N7, which took us past our first turn off at Dar Salam and on to Tambacounda, where we dropped off Boucar and ate lunch at the same hotel as on the way in.

The long drive back to Dakar on N1 showed us the back side of everything we'd seen the front side of two days before.

Stretches of road were in good shape; others had potholes. At one point some village boys had filled up the holes and signaled they'd like a little compensation for their labor.

We saw charcoal bags by the road and trucks overladen, headed for Dakar.

We had a final dinner on the embassy porch, feeling that we'd been gone a week.
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