The Desert And The Sea

I don't think I can go more than a couple of months without visiting the seaside. It's easy living in London. We're only just over an hour by car away from the nearest coast. We are in the north Atlantic, so the sea is always cold though, even in mid-summer so I much prefer the mediterranean or equatorial Atlantic.

My favourite part of the ocean is off the coast of West Africa, specifically near Senegal. That's the sweet spot of the Atlantic if you ask me. The American equivalent would be the southern tip of Florida - so basically the Caribbean.

Slightly north of that sweet spot are my favourite "European" islands, the Canaries, which are volcanic islands sanded by the mighty African Sahara. They are officially part of Spain, but there are places where you would swear you were on the African mainland - like in Morocco or Mauritania.

These camels were actually imported from Western Sahara, and minded by mainly Western Saharan men. I had the most interesting conversation despite the language barrier. They spoke very little Spanish, but with an accent I couldn't understand. They spoke a completely different version of Arabic to the one I'm familiar with. We used mainly French words, mixed in with Spanish and hand gestures haha. They became particularly animated when the topic of conversation ventured towards football.

I posed a question on Twitter asking people to guess where I took the camel photo. I got three responses at the point of writing this; two of which were in jest. I don't think anybody would have guessed this was taken at Mas Palomas on Gran Canaria, unless you'd been there before or are from there.

Thinking of it now, when I used to live in Senegal, I used to know a few people from the Canary Islands. Like I said before, they are not far apart at all - something like a 30 minute hop over the sea. Western Sahara and Mauritania are even closer. Likewise on the islands, especially on Lanzarote, there are many Senegalese merchants that travel to trade there. Most of them probably go by boat. That probably takes a few hours on a good day.

Peace & Love,

Adé