Our new friend Carlo

A few weeks before my departure I was contacted by an Italian guy from Rome, Carlo. We shared the little info we got, mostly through the Lonely Planet website, of Senegal, Guinea Bissau and the other West Africa countries we both had planned to explore. While moving my first steps in Senegal he was enjoying a couple of weeks with his girlfriend in Morocco. Before his arrival I discussed with Ale about this guy who seemed to be well informed of Senegal, Dakar and Yoff too. We finally met on the beach of Yoff Tonghor, from the first time we understood that he was a kind of easy going, friendly and backpacker traveler, in other words he was "attuned" with our travel-style. We celebrated our meeting with a huge dinner of grilled fresh fish with rice and vegetables, than we went to La Scala to spend a nice evening and admire lot of local beauties. It was a start of a good and sincere friendship, Ale introduced him a Boré fighter who gave him an interview ("but he asked me 10.000CFA instead of the planned 5000CFA"), lot of info and introduced him to many others famous traditional fighter, their managers, their sorcerer and explained him training methods and the evolution of this discipline which has now become a huge business. We spent 2 wonderful weeks first in Casamance, where we loved the natural and quiet life, then on the Bijagos where we experienced a week of adventure, simplicity and meeting. We were brave enough to face with the right mood the unconfortable side of our small excursions nor to get nervous while continuously sorrounded and observed by locals kids who were so curious and so lovely. We also tried to be as helpful as possible with Carlo when he had the bad luck to step on a resting ray fish that required immediate cure and that obliged him to an unplanned 2 weeks rest in Conakry. We had different way of life, Ale totally devote to the nostalgia toward his wife, I totally devote to local beauties and Carlo totally devoted to his beloved hand rolled cigars. Despite or maybe thanks to our small differences we tolerate and the we appreciated each other as good traveler brothers should always do. We got a new friend!