August 8, 2019
Flying LIS-DSS on a TAP Airbus A321neo
Senegal: My 128th Country
April 11, 2019
DAKAR, Senegal – Greetings from Senegal, my 128th country! I flew here from Lisbon, Portugal, (LIS) on TAP Air Portugal. This flight put me over 1.5 million miles flown! To be precise: 1,501,728.
I arrived at LIS at 1:56 p.m. after flying there from Barcelona (BCN) at the conclusion of my 17-night Costa Pacifica Caribbean and trans-Atlantic cruise from La Romana, Dominican Republic.
So glad I have a United Airlines/Star Alliance lounge membership! I had a seven-hour layover at LIS before my connecting flight to Senegal. I headed to the TAP Premium Lounge.
Ate lunch, posted photos, and worked on West Africa trip planning. Sadly I haven’t gotten all the planning for this trip segment to Senegal and The Gambia done in advance, so I’m scrambling last-minute.
WiFi wasn’t great in the lounge: 5.98 Mbps download speed; 4.12 upload.
Ate dinner and watched “NCIS” on my laptop. Then it was time to proceed to Gate N41A. They are making last call for the flight to Dakar as I arrive at the gate at 8:38. My boarding pass states boarding time is 8:30 – but the fine print also notes the gates closes 30 minutes prior to departure time.
Yikes, I had not seen that. I can’t recall ever seeing such an early gate closing before. More typical is 10-15 minutes prior to departure.
Rode a bus to the TAP Airbus A321neo, parked at a remote stand. Boarded via airstairs.
I took my seat in Economy Class 7C for the flight to Dakar’s new airport (DSS). Flight 1481 departed three minutes early at 9:07 p.m. and took off at 9:20. The time change to Senegal is one hour backward. I reset my watch to 8:20 p.m. GMT.
During the flight I worked on my calendar and French Polynesia blog posts. We landed at 11:57 and arrived 10 minutes early at midnight.
After passing through immigration, baggage claim, and customs, I purchased a SIM card with 2 GB of data for CFA 3,000 ($5.16). Then went outside at 1 a.m. to find a taxi.
Dakar’s old airport (Leopold Sedar Senghor; DKR) was just six miles northwest of the city center but Senegal built a new airport (Blaise Diagne; DSS; opened in December 2017) with modern facilities to replace it. The problem is the new airport is so far away from the city, out in the middle of nowhere southeast of Dakar. Fortunately there is a six-lane freeway (A1) linking the airport to the city, and it was fast going with hardly any traffic so late at night. Coming out of the airport, you get on the freeway at KM 47 (Mile 29).
The air was oddly filled with smoke as we drove into the city. Not sure if it’s air pollution or some massive burning of fields?
The freeway ended at 1:45 a.m. and we continued on city streets until arriving four minutes later at Hotel du Plateau. The trip from DSS airport took about 45 minutes. I had to argue with the taxi driver over the fare. The sign at the airport taxi rank states the night fare (midnight to 5 a.m.) is CFA 18,000 ($30.96). plus tolls. I kept track of the tolls as we passed through perhaps three booths on the highway. They amounted to CFA 1,700 ($2.92). I gave the driver CFA 20,000 ($34.40), but he demanded an extra 1,000 ($1.72). He spoke little English, so the language barrier made it difficult to have a conversation.
An employee of the hotel came outside to help with my bags and speak with the taxi driver. The employee told me the driver said I had agreed on a fare of CFA 21,000 ($36.12) but I replied I had done so such thing. He then motioned for the taxi driver to get lost.
I checked into Room 204. Immediately got ready for bed. It’s been a long day as I disembarked Costa Pacifica early this morning in Barcelona, flew to Lisbon, had the seven-hour layover, and then flew to Dakar.
The hotel’s WiFi is decent: 7.90 Mbps download speed; 8.47 upload.
In bed at 2:24 a.m., which is 4:24 a.m. Central European Standard Time, the zone where I started today. Everything went smoothly on my journey from Spain to Senegal. But it sucks arriving so late. It’s really going to mess with my sleep cycle, and I probably won’t see much tomorrow.
Watched some TiVo on my phone before bed at 3:04 a.m.
