We have long advertised an ambitious 10-week – now 3-month – trip from Dakar to Cape Town on our website. Matt did the trip himself in 2018 and we were all set to have our first clients in 2020. You know the rest of that story.

Since then, we didn’t do much to promote the trip. But people kept stumbling across it and asking about it. And now we have five people who have actually paid to go on it. Who are here. In Senegal. Now.

When we set the date for the trip, we had no idea that on June 1st, Ousmane Sonko, the main opposition candidate in Senegal’s 2024 presidential contest, would be sentenced to two years in prison. Given the recent protests in Dakar and the violent, heavy-handed response by government security forces, we have scrapped our original plan to begin the ride in Almadies, on the western most point of mainland Africa.

Instead, we will start further south and head east, possibly circumventing the Casamance, which has been paralyzed since the Sonko sentencing. On the one hand, it’s a disappointment to skip one of our favorite areas in West Africa. On the other, it’s a chance for new adventures in Senegal’s eastern regions paired with a very adventurous crossing into Guinea from its northern border.

This was always going to be a challenging trip requiring constant improvisation and flexibility. Might as well get straight into it.

I was planning on joining the trip for the first week, but given the modified itinerary and the overall uncertainty about how things will play out over the next week or two in Senegal, it makes more sense to stay home. Riding hundreds of kilometers into the interior of the country, around The Gambia, would be a hard one to sell to the wife. Instead, I will be following the “coast to coast” on instagram with envy (like everyone else, right????).

I will share some more thoughts about the trip in a post later this week, including adventure as an art form, and a bit about Matt’s vision and ingenuity that has the potential to turn a memorable trip on paper into the journey of a lifetime.

But first, a post about Senegal.