It's main export of peanuts is slipping and the country is turning it's eyes to tourism. Errant UK manager and professional surfer, Chris Thomson was invited along with colleague Ben Ridding from the R.N.L.I. to suss out the potential of The Gambia as a surfing destination. Here is their story.
We had only been in The Gambia for a couple of hours and here we were facing out to sea with our new friends, Mr Fix It, Bob Marley and Mr Happy Boy, three local Gambia fella's about the same age as us, all keen to see us take our first surf in the mouth of the river Gambia.
Mr Happy Boy, even happier now he knows about surfing. Im pretty sure they had a little wager on who was going to be eaten first. Ben and I had researched this little left-hand point break back in England, thanks to Google Earth, quite possibably a surf travelers dream programme. The waves although small were very long. We jumped into the murky waters, paddling with just our hands.
Chris cheater five over the aligators Before long our nerves eased and we were trading waves, desperately trying to hold in any cliche from the Endless Summer movie.
As night fell we packed up our kit and followed our hosts to our accommodation. Mr Fix It, Bob Marley and Mr Happy Boy are reformed "Bumsters", hassling kids to you and I. The president of The Gambia, Yahya Jammeh, had noted the excellent benefits of tourism long before he came to power in 1994. However tourists never seemed to return due to the amount of hassle they received. To straighten this out he gathered up 200 of the worst "Bumsters", educated them and passed them out as Official Tour Guides.
The O.T.G's then went on to give themselves easterly memorable names, making it easier to make friends. With Ben's friendly nature we soon found ourselves with three "friends".
Dodging the sting rays Before long the guy's had cooked up some amazing fish and we were truly glad to see big dishes with our names on them! After dinner, Mr Fix It told us he could take us fishing and we would catch the biggest fish of our lives. This sounded far to good to be true. Little did he know our fishing experience was none.
The next morning broke with the sound of tropical birds, which after a night of trying to catch one mosquito, it was a pleasurable sound. Jumping into the car we headed over to the Denton Bridge and met up with Mr Fix It. After a few failed attempts to start the engine we were off in search of the "Big" fish of the day.
Three hours later and no fish, we were looking pretty desperate. Then out of no where Mr Fix It's line started to pull. At this point you can only imagine the excitement of three grown men all diving for one rod on a very small boat in the middle of The Gambia. The poor fish was cast onto the boat, the Snapper was all but big, but we still claimed it. We all took pictures of us holding the fish, the standard "surf trip on a boat" pose. The sad thing was we didn't catch it and it wasn't worth keeping.
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