Hi

Craig Carey Clinch has called me this evening to confirm they have arrived in Senegal.

Acceptance of the carnet for entry into Senegal has it seems been "suspended" in favour of a 10 day passavant which costs 2,500 CFA/5 Euros. It can be renewed for a further 15 days & it is believed for a further period.

I have now received word that French & German travellers have reported problems to their respective carnet issuing clubs.

Revised entry guidance is expected from the Alliance Internationale de Tourisme (AIT) in Geneva in the near future.

AIT are seeking confirmation of the border entry requirements from the Touring Club du Senegal & Senegal Embassies in London/Paris, however, this is difficult to obtain !

Will update again as/when.

Paul

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Paul Gowen
Senior Travel Administrator - RAC Carnets
RAC UK

Is this really a change?

I did Senegal earlier this year on a passavant. A carnet wasn't necessary.

Tim

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"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)

Hi from Richard Toll in Senegal

OK, so here's the latest on the carnet situation.

The Carnet has been compulsory for some years for all those without magic carpets, houdini hypnotic tricks, or a masochistic liking for arguing the toss at the northern border in particular for hours and hours and hours and hours to try and prove a point. I've always preferred to travel instead.

About a fortnight ago, the Carnet requirement was suspended. The grapevine tells me that this is something to do with a pending law suit from some French freight company against the Senegalese Government. It was done with no consultation or warning, so no blame should be levelled at the RAC for not knowing about it

The first that we heard about it (I'm leading a group of 10 bikes here at the moment) was at Boujdour in the Western Sahara when a group of French camper vans coming north told us that they'd been refused entry for not having some bullshit paperwork and then being quoted hundreds of Euro for the ten day pass.

I checked with Dakar who said that the Carnet was still in force and is definitely required for freight export of vehicles.

On arriving at Diama, I was pleased to meet the Man in charge of customs that day, who has excellent English and bitched at me for half an hour about how he's fed up with getting no clear direction re the Carnets for land borders, said (amazingly) that all the confusion damages tourism and then charged us all 5 euro each for the ten day pass and refused a pack of cigarettes for spending ages writing out loads of passes in duplicate for ten bikes and a van.

The pass has a fee of 2500 CFA printed on it, but on reaching Zebrabar heard reports that up to 70 euro is being quoted. So watch out for this attempted scam if you pass though - the helpfull chap is not always going to be on duty at Diama and Rosso remains the nightmare that it's always been.

Senegalese customs expect the Carnet to be reinstated soon and the Gvmt are still saying that carnets are needed. But for the time being it's the ten day pass. This pass can be renewed for 15 days on two occasions, allowing 40 days travel in Senegal.

I'll let you all know how things are at the other borders as we plan to pass in and out of Senegala few times at the western and southern land borders.

Oh, army/police checkpoints in Mauritania are asking to see carnets. Probably an attempted scam.

Regards

Craig

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www.motorcycleoutreach.org
www.globebusters.com

Carnets were only required for cars and other vehicles more than four years old, see Senegal Passavants.

Plus a quote from my trip write-up in January, "Then it’s over to the customs office. A long wait whilst the guy transcribes our details onto a passavant (a sort of carnet substitute) and we pay the officially receipted CFA 2500."

Tim

__________________
"For sheer delight there is nothing like altitude; it gives one the thrill of adventure
and enlarges the world in which you live," Irving Mather (1892-1966)