Senegal
March 8th to 19th, 2025
This is a blog post about my first trip to West Africa. I had booked a 12-day trip with Intrepid to Senegal and The Gambia. I flew into Dakar, the capital of Senegal, from Brussels on Brussels Airlines, which is a five-and-a-half-hour flight. Immigration was really quick and easy - no forms to fill out, no visa. But, the immigration officer scammed me out of 50 Euros. He asked me if this was my first time in Senegal. When I said 'yes', he told me there is a 50 Euro immigration fee. I wasn't going to argue about it, but I suspected that it was a scam, when he insisted on exact cash payment and didn't give me a receipt. I had my suspicion confirmed later, when I found out no one else in my group had been asked to pay this so-called "immigration fee". Oh well, that is just something you have to deal with in poorer countries.
The Dakar airport is quite far outside the city. Without traffic it takes about an hour by taxi, during rush hour it can be 2 to 3 hours. We stayed the first two nights in Dakar in the Hotel Virage, which is in a beautiful location overlooking the Atlantic Ocean. This was my room and the view from my balcony.
That evening I met our local Senegalese guide Abou, and my fellow travelers. We were a group of 8 people, from Europe, US and Canada, ranging widely in ages and backgrounds.
Dakar
Our tour started properly the next morning with a visit to Gorée Island, which is a small speck of land just off the coast of Dakar. You get there on a very busy ferry, which takes about 45 minutes.
Gorée Island, a UNESCO world heritage site, is a beautiful and tranquil place with a grim past. This was the largest slave-trading center on the African coast from the 15th to the 19th century. The island was ruled successively by the Portuguese, Dutch, English and French, and its colonial architecture is a contrast between the brutal slave-quarters and the elegant houses of the slave traders.
We spent a few hours walking around the island and visited the main Slave House Museum, which is housed in one of the former slave quarters. It was interesting but harrowing to see the depressingly small and tight rooms where hundreds of slaves were cramped together, for days or weeks before being transferred onto slave ships for the brutal Atlantic crossing, which many did not survive.
Back on the mainland, we visited the African Renaissance Monument. Completed in 2010, it is a 52 meter high bronze statue, located on a hill just outside of Dakar. It represents a man holding a woman and an infant, pointing towards the future of the continent.
There is an elevator inside that takes you to a small observation deck in the man's hat. The views over the sprawling city and the Atlantic Ocean make it well worth it.
The sculpture was designed by a Senegalese architect and built by a construction company from North Korea. The rather grandiose project was dreamed up by the former president, and was quite controversial due to its high cost.
Northern Senegal
The next morning we had a long drive towards the northern border of the country. Our first stop along the way was only 30 kilometers outside of Dakar - Lake Retba, also known as the famous Pink Lake of Senegal, except it wasn't pink when we got there. It did have a slight orange hue, but it was certainly not a pink lake.
The lake is a shallow and salt-rich body of water, separated from the ocean by only a narrow strip of land. It usually gets its famous pink color from a type of microalgae that produces a red pigment. While its coloration can be very vivid during the dry season, the last few years have seen much stronger than usual rainfall, which mutes the algae's effect. Due to its high salt concentration, which at times can even exceed that of the Dead Sea, the lake has no marine life, but it is used commercially for traditional salt harvesting. We took a small boat out to the middle of the lake and watched a man collecting baskets of salt from the lake bottom. To protect his skin from the harsh salt, he covered his body in shea butter.
The lake used to be the finish line of the final stage of the Paris-Dakar Rally from 1979 to 2007. While still being called 'Paris-Dakar', the rally has not been held in West Africa since 2007, due to terrorisms concerns along the route.
We continued out journey north towards Saint-Louis. Northern Senegal is located in the Sahel, which is the transitional zone stretching across the African continent between the Sahara desert in the north and the savannahs and rain forests in the south. The Sahel is a semi-arid zone with hardly any rainfall for 8 months, and a highly variable rainy season around May to September. The landscape consists mostly of dry sandy ground with scattered bushes and tree. The most iconic of the trees are Baobabs, which are the natural symbol of Senegal. With their huge trunks and sparse branches they are also known as the upside-down tree. Their hollow trunks have been used historically as shelters, storage spaces, and even tombs. The tree carries a small white fruit, which is rich in vitamin C and is used in Senegalese cooking and to make a very tasty juice. This particular one is estimated to be at least 1000 years old.
When talking about the landscape of Senegal, I, unfortunately, also have to show these pictures.
Along the drive we saw the horrendous plastic pollution, this entire country suffers from. Most of the plastic packaging comes from goods imported by Chinese and Lebanese companies. And if you combine a sudden influx of a huge amount of plastic packaging, with a culture that is used to throw out (the previously only organic) waste into the landscape, and a dry open landscape with strong winds, then you end up with a country entirely covered in plastic garbage. You hardly find a piece of ground without any plastic, even far outside of the towns and villages. I had seen bad plastic pollution in many places around the world, but never to this extent before. It is quite sad to see, and hard to imagine how it could ever be cleaned up.
Saint-Louis
It was just before sunset, when we reached the historic city of Saint-Louis, which is located at the mouth of the Senegal River just across the border with Mauritania. The city, founded by the French in 1659, was the first European settlement in West Africa. It served as the capital of French Senegal until 1902.
The colonial part of the city is spread mostly along a long and narrow island, which is reached by the historic Faidherbe Bridge, a steel structure, designed by Gustave Eiffel.
We stayed at the basic but clean and nice Residence Hotel, with a great location overlooking the mouth of the Senegal River.
The next morning we drove north-east into the Senegal River delta, to visit the Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary. The sanctuary is a large wetland area along the border between Senegal and Mauritania, and is home to millions of migratory birds. We got on a small boat for a tour through the sanctuary. We saw white pelicans, herons, African spoonbills, and many egrets, cormorants and ducks.
Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981.
I also learned that baby pelicans are black when they are born and only turn white once they reach adulthood.
Other than birds you can see warts hogs and monitor lizards in the park.
After returning back to Saint-Louis we had a city tour by horse-drawn carriage. A lot of transportation here is still done by horse or donkey.
The market is fascinating, colorful and somewhat chaotic with people, goats, donkeys.
We ended up at the beach, where a huge number of these colorful fishing boats were lined up. These are very basic boats with a few wooden benches to sit on and no roofs. It is hard to imagine that the fishermen often spend several days and nights out on the open ocean in these boats.
The following morning we headed back south, but further inland. One remarkable aspect of the weather here, is the huge temperature difference between the coastal areas and the rest of the country. While Dakar was fairly temperate, and even got quite chilly in the evenings, you only need to head 50 or so kilometers inland, to experience temperatures well in excess of 40°C (104°F).
It was another full day in the bus today, but we had a few stops along the way. And even though we had to squeeze into a fairly small bus, the drives overall were quite comfortable, and we had a lot of fun together. I was also impressed by the fairly good mobile data coverage throughout the whole country, with seemingly fewer network holes, than you'd typically experience on a drive through Germany or the US.
Our first stop along the way, was a visit of a nomadic family from the Fulani tribe.
The Fulani are the second largest ethnic group in Senegal, making up about 25% of the population (compared to the Wolof tribe, which has about a 40% share, and makes up the majority of the urban population). Traditionally the Fulani are semi-nomadic pastoralists, raising cattle, goats and sheep. They have also played a important role historically in the Islamization of West Africa.
Touba
We reached the holy city of Touba in the early afternoon. Founded in 1887 by Sheikh Amadou Bamba, the leader of the Mouride brotherhood, Touba is the religious and spiritual capital for the country's Muslims (who make up more than 90% of the population). Touba operates like a semi-autonomous state, governed by the Mouride brotherhood. It has its own tax, finance and legal system, and is not administered by the central government in Dakar. The city laws follow strict Islamic rules, with a complete ban on alcohol, tobacco, and other vices. So, it was a bit challenging for our guide to find a place that would serve us lunch during Ramadan here. He managed to find a small fast-food place that made an exception for a bunch of non-muslim foreigners.
The centerpiece of the city is the Great Mosque of Touba, which is one of the largest and most important mosques in Africa.
Construction of the building began in 1932 and it was officially completed in 1963, but continues to be expanded. The mosque is a sprawling complex with marble clad prayer halls, and, somewhat unusually, seven large minarets. We had a very interesting tour led by a local guided who took us through the whole building. There were many people sleeping on the floor inside the huge prayer halls, while waiting for the free Ramadan evening meal.
Southern Senegal
After Touba we continued the drive further south to the city of Kaolack, which is famous for its peanut industry. We saw literal mountains of peanuts stacked up by the side of the road, and the whole city smelled like peanuts.
A funny thing you see in every city here, is people driving around with motorbikes completely wrapped in bubble wrap. Apparently, they want to keep their bikes looking pristine and scratch-free, so they keep the bubble wrap on.
After spending one night at the beautiful Le Relais Hotel by the shores of the Saloum River, we left Kaolack early morning and headed further south into The Gambia. This was the first time we entered Gambia. We would do so again on the way back in a few days. I posted my trip report and all of the Gambia photos on a separate page here.
After crossing through Gambia, we entered the southern part of Senegal for the first time. We stayed at the Kadiandiou Magne Hotel in a city called Ziguinchor, which is located at the southern shore of the huge and wide Casamance River. This was again a one night stay, and we headed west back to the coast the next day, but first we had an audience to meet a king.
The man in the stylish bright red outfit is Sibilumbaï Diedhiou the current king of Oussouye, which is a small kingdom in the Casamance region of Southern Senegal consisting of 17 villages and about 3,500 people. He is the spiritual leader of the Jola tribe, which follows an animist religion. The kingship is not inherited, but he is appointed for life by the tribal elders. He has three wives and 17 children, and despite his busy schedule, was kind enough to grant us an audience. The young man next to him is one of his nephews, who introduced the king and translated into French (and Abou then into English for us).
Afterwards we visited a small village to see a so-called "Fetish", which is a sacred site used in animist religious practices. The people in this region are mostly Christian, so we saw the first pigs here, as pork is a big part of their diet. The centerpiece of the Fetish is this enormous 1,000 year old Kapok tree. These tree grow enormous roots, which are higher than a person, in order to stabilize the tree in the shallow soil. In this part of the country, Kapok trees are considered sacred, and often serve as fetish sites like here.
There was a small round house with a very interesting museum inside.
We continued to Cap Skirring, located in the very South-West corner of the country only a few miles from the border with Guinea-Bissau. We stayed at the very nice La Marsu Hotel, located right by the ocean.
We had a couple of free afternoons here to enjoy the beach and the Atlantic Ocean. The water was a bit chilly, but it was very nice to swim in despite the rather large and powerful waves. The huge and wide sand beach, was almost entirely empty save for some cows wandering along the water's edge. If you walked for about a mile to the south, and you would be entering Guinea Bissau.
The next morning we had an excursion to visit the Kadiouie Open Air Museum to learn about the customs and culture of the Jola people. The Jola are an indigenous ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Casamance region of southern Senegal, as well as parts of The Gambia and Guinea-Bissau. They are mostly rice farmers, and though many have adopted Christianity or Islam, most Jola people maintain strong ties to their traditional animist religion. We were given a very interesting and entertaining introduction to Jola customs, tools, musical instruments and culture by this man, who also demonstrated how to climb a palm tree.
The landscape down here in Southern Senegal is completely different from the North. We had left the Sahel zone when crossing Gambia, and had entered dense tropical rainforest.
After a second night at Cap Skirring, we had another very long drive back up north, and into Gambia again. The roads here were significantly worse than in the north, and the drive was quite slow as our driver skillfully tried to avoid the deep potholes in the road. We crossed the huge mangrove covered delta of the Casamance River. Along the way we stopped by this little shack, where women were selling fish and oysters.
The local oysters, which we had seen everywhere in the markets, are quite small compared to oysters we get in northern climates. They cook them in these big pots over an open fire, and they were very tasty.
We spent the next two days in Gambia, before heading out to the north again for our last night in Saly. My report about the Gambia part of the trip is on a separate page here.
Saly
After two days in Gambia we arrived in our last hotel, the Royal Saly hotel, which was probably the nicest of the whole trip. It's a beautiful sea-side resort with a lovely pool and another wide and empty sand beach. Speaking of the hotels in general, I would describe most of the places we stayed at as solid 3 star in terms of comfort and cleanliness, often with 4 to 5 star food, but rather sketchy service. There just isn't much of a service culture in the tourist sector here yet.
Right in front of the huge sand beach of the hotel, was a pile of rocks full of pelicans.
One last group photo:
I left Senegal on an overnight flight the next afternoon to Brussels, concluding what has been a fascinating and eye-opening trip to a region I had never visited before. I can't wait to explore other parts of West Africa soon.
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