Geleh Geleh and other The Gambia Transportation Tips

'Mode': AROUND
Category: Other
Getting TO/AROUND: The best fun you can have is to use the local mini buses known as "Geleh-Gelehs", the driver is often accompanied by his son who is continually balling out their destination. A trip from the west coast beach resorts into Serrekunda can cost you as little as five delasi per person. The bush taxis are literally that, if you take one into the rural areas as we did to visit Ebou Bah's family, they plough through the bush as there are no roads leading to these small villages. The villagers take their crops up to the nearest main road to await collection by the farmers' co-operative. The tour operators warn you that your insurance policy doesn't cover you for local transportation, I've not yet come across a policy that has that clause in it!

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'Mode': AROUND
Category: Bus
Getting TO/AROUND: We made far more use of the local buses this time around. It’s still a little confusing that the buses and the yellow and green taxis are referred to as “Bush Taxis”, as the cost between using these two means of transport is astronomical. We walked from the Suma Hotel to the Brikama Bus stand where we were very efficiently packed inside and charged an extra 10 Delasi for stowing our rucksack on the roof, along with a worryingly large amount of building material, including several hundredweight of scaffolding. We enjoyed the trip and the company and turned up in Brikama an hour and a half later, the rucksack not having been flattened of sloshed in white paint. A few days later we took another bus from Brikama bus stand to Gunjur a very smooth ride along a new road, at 10 Delasi for us and eight for the bag. Alarmingly Gunjur bus stand consisted of two rows of buses on either side of the road, pointing in different directions. Gunjur is a bit of a vague village, with no real center, luckily we had been told that we needed to ask for “Beach Side” and pointed to a bus that would leave when it had filled up, in maybe an hour. After slightly less than the estimated time we took off on a journey that lasted less than ten minutes and pitched up in Gunjur fishing village. We had been told that our guesthouse Woulaba Garden was a fifteen minute walk from the fishing village. A very helpful bur not very knowledgeable local boy, named Boubicar, told us he knew exactly where the guesthouse was and would show us the way, just for the pleasure of our company. An hour and a half later we found it after stopping at almost every compound to ask directions and criss-crossing various bush paths.
When we left Gunjur we headed north to Brufut, having taken a donkey cart to Gunjur “Bus Stand” and boarding the Serrakunda bound bus. This was gratifying as we not having any kind of Gambian bus time table we now knew that we could pick up this same bus to complete our journey, when our stay in Brufut was done.

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