This travel guide is about travelling by public transport along the coast south of Dakar (the Petite Côte): how to get around, things to see and do on the way, and some general practical information as well.

Is Senegal Safe?
Solo Female Travelers
Visas
What to Expect (or What Not to Expect)
Transportation
Accommodation
Money and Costs
Arriving at Blaise Diagne International Airport
Dakar
Toubab Dialao
Mbour
Onward Travel from Senegal
Packing List

Is Senegal safe?

Senegal is one of the most stable countries in West Africa. The separatist fighting in the Casamance region that resulted in travel warnings from most foreign governments is not an issue anymore. You can check what your own government has to say. When you’re on the road in the Casamance you might pass through checkpoints where you’ll have to show your passport to the police.

Like many countries in this part of the world, your biggest problem by far is the roads (and the vehicles you’ll be in on them).

There is some amount of hassle from touts here in touristy areas along the coast, in Dakar, and around public transportation. They can be really persistent and aggravating.

Just be sensible: watch out on deserted beaches, even during the day. Dakar is not a place you want to explore after dark. Don’t be on the roads at night. There’s a good chance you’ll be carrying larger amounts of cash – split it up.

Solo female travelers

Solo female travelers can expect a fair bit of hassle from beach boys: guys who will approach and attempt to befriend you on the beach, or follow you around, constantly. They aren’t threatening – just annoying. Ignore them.

In general, as a woman traveling alone in Senegal I felt safe and didn’t notice a particular difference from the previous time I traveled in Senegal with my husband. Unlike in a lot of other predominantly muslim societies, in Senegal there are just as many women around as men, and I never found myself being the only woman in the room/vehicle/street etc. which made me more comfortable, as a solo female traveler. You should consider how you dress: skirts and tee shirts are fine, just err on the side of modesty.

Visas

Most nationalities don’t need a visa for Senegal which makes just flying in and entering really simple for a change. Dakar is a good place to pick up visas for onward travel to other West African nations.

What to expect (or What not to expect)

As I mentioned above, Senegal makes a good introduction to West Africa. That being said, travel in West Africa is significantly harder than in other parts of the continent – for example, it’s not at all like Southern Africa. It’s less developed, it’s rougher, there is much less tourism (in some cases almost none), things go wrong, there isn’t a lot in the way of ‘amenities’ that make a holiday go smoothly. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend independent overland travel in Senegal for your very first trip to Africa.

There is a fair bit of tourism along the coast in the beach resorts. Off the resorts it dwindles noticeably. There isn’t a big travelers’ scene and you won’t find a raft of beach bars and city cafes to hang out at, although there are definitely some here and there. I was in Senegal during high season (twice) and most places I went felt practically deserted (I’m fine with that).

Language can be a real barrier. If you don’t speak French, learn some: at least numbers and key words for directions, travel and transportation.

WiFi can be difficult to find and it will almost always be slow and unreliable. In small towns your guesthouse might not have it. You can of course get around this by buying a local SIM card before you leave Dakar.

The rainy season runs from July to September. The winter (November to February) is the dry season and apparently also the busiest time but advance bookings still aren’t necessary.

Transportation

You can get around Senegal on public transport. It’s definitely uncomfortable and not very safe (bad vehicles, bad driving) but you can get where you need to go. You can forget about seatbelts in a taxi or sept-place (beat up old station wagons that take seven passengers and generally are not roadworthy). Drivers are often reckless. You should stay off the roads after dark.

Sept-places leave from any town’s Gare Routière when full. Sometimes prices are posted, sometimes not. You will very often be charged extra and totally at random for your luggage – bargain for it. Wherever you are going, set off early and allow extra time to wait for the car to fill. However long you think a trip will take – it will almost definitely take longer. When you arrive in a town, don’t try to get a taxi to your guesthouse from inside the Gare – go out into the street (it’ll cost less).

If you’re staying somewhere for a while and you find a taxi driver you like, get his WhatsApp number and book him when you need a ride. Be careful with taxis: if you’re going out at night book one through your hotel, don’t flag one in the street if you can help it.

Collectives – shared-taxis, often run around the streets on more or less set routes – not door-to-door, you’d get out at the closest intersection or landmark. Flag him as he passes and make sure he’s going your way. You pay by the seat, generally 100 CFA in town. You can usually make a collective taxi private by buying up all the seats.

Before you book a taxi to the airport or plan a day trip, ask your guesthouse what it should cost. Talk to a few taxi drivers and bargain hard or see if the guesthouse can help you to arrange it.

Accommodation

There are some hostels, and they are nothing like the hostels you’ll find in SE Asia or the West. In the capital you have plenty of big, expensive hotels. If a western luxury hotel (at inflated prices) is what you’re after, then you can certainly get it. There are plenty of basic hotels, a lot of nice guesthouses, and beach lodge/holiday resort-type places.

Money and costs

Currency: CFA – the West African/Central African Franc

There are lots of ATMs in Dakar and other cities/big towns. Smaller villages don’t have them so don’t leave town without making sure you have enough cash to last. ATMs go out of service pretty often, and run out of cash on weekends on a regular basis so don’t wait until your cash is down to nothing to get more out.

Bring a couple of hundred USD with you to Senegal as a backup – it’s easy to change as needed. Credit cards are not really used outside of major hotels and restaurants.

When you withdraw cash and get ‘huge’ notes (i.e. 10 000 CFA which is about 17 USD), break them as soon as you can. Make it your mission to get change and hang onto it for dear life – it’s practically impossible to pay for things like water and short hops in taxis without small notes/close to exact change.

Senegal is not the cheapest destination – but for West Africa, it’s not too bad. The hotels I mention in this guide cost 16 – 20 USD for a single and 33 USD for a double, dorms for 8 – 10 USD. Public transport is a bit arbitrary but an average day trip or medium distance generally cost from 3.50 – 8 USD. You can eat in a local place for about 5 USD but it will cost you more when you start in on the grilled fish and seafood. Adding in extra for things like activities and eating at international restaurants and good places in Dakar, one person can comfortably travel here for 50 USD per day, or less than that depending mainly on your room and long-distance travel days. For a couple sharing rooms, it’s a lot easier to keep costs down.

Arriving at Blaise Diagne International Airport

The ‘new’ airport is about 50 km from Dakar. It takes about an hour to the city in a taxi, and costs 18 000 – 25 000 CFAs.

Another option is to go to Toubab Dialao instead. It’s a little coastal village about 20 km away from the airport, and makes a good starting point for travelling south along the coast.

There are ATMs in Arrivals (case in point for my distrust of ATMs – there were four in the airport and only one actually worked).

Dakar

Home to about 1.2 million people, as African cities go, Dakar is not really overwhelming and there are good things to do in and around the city. Plus, there are good restaurants, bars and cafes.

I stayed at Via Via in Yoff. They have basic single rooms (12 000 CFA) with a pretty terrible shared bathroom, but a nice garden restaurant with ok food. There are places out in the street with cheap local eats. It’s walking distance to the beach and it also felt comfortable and secure (I was alone).

On my previous trip, I stayed at Hotel Al Baraka. It’s nothing special (for the price) but the location is good, not far from Plateau, making it very walkable to good restaurants – like Farid, which is a great Lebanese place, or Le Lagon, which is decorated to look like a ship and has a long terrace on stilts.

Dakar – things to see and do

• If your hotel has a pool or private beach, I’d recommend using it. The city’s public beaches aren’t up to much. Yoff is ok for a long stroll and it’s clean. There are some cafes and restaurants along it, and a surfing school. N’Gor beach is nice and lively.
• Île de N’Gor. Get a taxi to N’Gor asking to be dropped at the ’embarke’. Walk down onto the beach. You’ll immediately be accosted by guys trying to get you into a private boat to the island. There is a public pirogue that runs pretty often with no apparent notice, costs 1000 CFA return and takes just a few minutes. On the island you can walk around (there are no vehicles), check out the little markets, and the beaches.
• Île de Gorée. There’s a big public ferry that goes from the Gare Maritime roughly every two hours all day long, and takes about 20 minutes. Gorée is a beautiful, flowery, colourful place – with a dark history. Visit the Maison des Esclaves, a former slaving merchant’s house.

Toubab Dialao

Travel in Senegal is all about trawling through the coastal towns south of the capital, starting with Toubab Dialou. Down sandy country lanes, it’s a tiny village with a short rocky beach and lots of pretty outlook points from the village on a cliff overlooking the water.

How to get from the airport to Toubab Dialao

Toubab’s a lot closer to the airport than Dakar is. If you’re going straight there (or back) organising a ride with your guesthouse is the easiest option and costs around 13 000 CFA. Coming from the Gare in Dakar, it takes about 1.5 hours in a sept-place.

Toubab Dialao – things to see and do

There really isn’t much to do here: that’s the beauty of it.

• Walk around the little village. There are lots of handicraft stalls set up.
• The beach is really nice and it’s not busy.

The basics

Food. Sobo Bade is a cool, really chilled out pretty place on the cliff overlooking the beach and they do good food. Walking up the beach there are some restaurants that do good fresh fish and seafood.

Beds. I stayed a couple of nights at Keur Dofie (10 000 CFA for a single). It’s absolutely lovely, with a pretty garden and pool. I also stayed a couple of kilometers away from Toubab in a village called Kelle where there is a hostel named Begue Pokai. It’s cheap, kind of awful, and serves a horrible breakfast (6500 CFA dorms). Sobo Bade also has dorms (5000 CFA) and is way better value. To get to Begue Pokai take a collective from the Gare in Toubab to the cutoff on the main road in Kelle. From there you’ll need to walk a short distance off the road to find the (very badly signed) hostel – don’t do this at night. During the day you can easily walk between the villages, it’s only a couple of kilometers.

Transport. You don’t need transport in Toubab Dialao. There is a Gare where you can get sept-places for longer trips and collective taxis on to the next villages.

Money. There are no ATMs in Toubab. Bring cash – the closest ATM is in Mbour.

Mbour

Mbour is the major town on the Petite Côte. I like it: there’s a really beautiful beach and some good places to stay. It’s also a handy base for day tripping. Apparently it is less touristy than Saly, where you find all the big beach resort-type places. I didn’t go to Saly, but I can definitely say that Mbour is not crowded with tourists.

How to get from Toubab Dialao to Mbour

It takes a couple of steps and looking at the map, it’s a roundabout route to say the least, but this is how it goes by public transport (and it only takes a few hours):

1. Toubab Dialao to Diamniadio. Take a collective taxi from the Gare in Toubab for 300 CFA per person.
2. Diamniadio to Mbour. The taxi will drop you in Diamniadio where all the transport congregates (tell him you’re going to Mbour). There are a lot of sept-places and minibuses and touts will tell you there is no car going, to get you onto the slow, crazy-crowded bus to Mbour. Don’t listen: there are definitely sept-places going for 1000 to 2000 CFA per person.
3. From the Gare. Get out at the big Gare on the very edge of Mbour. In the street out in front of the Gare, you can flag a collective to go the rest of the way into town. Collectives will drop you at the station of sorts near the Grand Hôpital.

Mbour – things to see and do

• Check out the big modern mosque near the Gare.
• The beach is really long and beautiful, and there are several bars and cafes for lounging. Blue Africa rents sunbeds on their beach under the palms. It’s perfect.
• Walk way up the beach to where the fishing boats pull in. There’s a big, frantic, smelly fish market there.

Day trips around Mbour

Mbour is a good base to stay at for day tripping.

Joal – Fadiout

Joal is a fishing village. Fadiout is an island connected to the village by a wooden bridge. Everything on the island (buildings, the cemetery) is made out of shells. Joal is about a 1.5 hour drive from Mbour. To get there:

From the Gare in Mbour, find a minibus or sept-place going to Joal, for 750 CFA per seat. Get out at the Gare in Joal and go out into the street. You can walk or get into a collective going the short distance to the Fadiout roundabout and you’ll see the bridge there. You don’t need a guide or a ticket to cross the bridge.

Sine-Saloum Delta – boat trip

Wetlands filled with exotic birdlife. Spend a half day drifting along channels in the mangrove swamps on a pirogue, past little sand islands flapping with hundreds of birds, particularly the main ‘island’ in the delta, Île des Oiseaux. Boat trips are expensive, try to get a group together.

The easiest way from Mbour is to get a sept-place from the Gare straight to Ndangane (the town on the edge of the delta) for about 2000 per person. If nothing is going to Ndangane any time soon, take a sept-place to Joal. Just before the Fadiout roundabout walk left a short distance to the ‘garage’ there and get the next sept-place going on to Ndangane for 1000 per seat (the price is actually signposted).

Get out at the commercial dock in Ndangane. Supposedly there is a Tourist Info Office here to help arrange boats. Even though it was peak season, my friend and I saw no such thing and there was nobody in sight. Asking around, with a contact number we’d brought from the guesthouse, we tracked down a guy with a boat. A half day out in a pirogue seems to cost around 25 000 for the boat (you can share it), and includes tea, snacks, and ‘National Park Fees’ (I have serious doubts as to where those fees went).

You should be able to get a sept-place from the dock back to Joal quite quickly and on to Mbour from there.

The basics

Food. There’s a giant Auchan (supermarket) next to the Gare. Blue Africa, right on the beach does ok food – better by a long shot and just up the road towards the Grand Hopital, is Alain et Elly.

Beds. I stayed at Dalal ak Jamm (20 000 CFA for a double) and definitely recommend it for friendly owners, nice pool, and the location just a stone’s throw from the beach and from the collective station by the Grand Hôpital.

Transport. There’s a ‘station’ for collective taxis right across from the Grand Hôpital. It’s 100 CFA per person on the standard loop running through the city to the big Gare next to Auchan. The Gare is pretty big and kind of confusing at first, but you’ll see that vehicles are grouped together by destination and signposted (kind of).

Money. There are a couple of ATMs at the Auchan shopping centre and nearby, and more along the Route National.

How to get from Mbour to Dakar

Take a collective to Croix M Saly. It’s a major intersection past the Gare, where you can wait for the next sept-place going to Dakar. A seat costs 2000 CFA. Get out at Pikine, the huge Gare on the way into Dakar. Outside in the road, flag down a taxi to go the rest of the way into the city. It’s about 2-2500 CFA in to Yoff.

Onward travel from Senegal

Our first visit to Senegal was part of a larger road trip by public transport all the way down to Sierra Leone. We went through The Gambia and back into Senegal in the Casamance, and then on to Guinea-Bissau.

The Gambia

We got to The Gambia from Dakar in a sept-place to Karang, the border-crossing. From there we took a bus to Barra and then a ferry to Banjul. It took a whole, very long day. The Gambia is visa-free for most nationalities. In Banjul we stayed at the Princess Diana Hotel, and got our visas for Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau, both in one day.

What’s it like? See my stories about The Gambia.

The Casamance

We took a sept-place from Brikama (The Gambia) to Ziguinchor (back in Senegal). From there we got a bus to Cap Skirring. There is a nice long beach at Cap Skirring, and the town itself has good places to hang out (try Cafe Resto for great food) but the best thing to do is hire yourself a scooter and go exploring to other villages and beaches nearby.

What’s it like? See my stories about the Casamance.

Guinea-Bissau

From Cap Skirring we went back to Ziguinchor, and caught an early morning sept-place to the border crossing at Ingore/Sao Domingos. On the other side we picked up a minibus the rest of the way to Bissau.

What’s it like? See my stories about Guinea-Bissau.

Packing list

Senegal is the sort of place where it’s better to come prepared. In addition to season-appropriate clothing, here are a few things you should bring:

• bug spray, malaria tablets and a mosquito net. Malaria is not something you want to get and healthcare is not good.
• USD. Bring a couple of hundred dollars with you as an emergency stash which you can change as needed.
• Sunscreen. It can be hard to find outside Dakar.
• a flashlight for regular power outages and blackouts
• powerbanks, again, for use against unreliable power supply
• a padlock for your bag or your door if the lock provided is no good.
• Yellow Fever certificate. Get the vaccination and bring the certificate with you.
• copies of your passport. Useful to carry on you for checkpoints, and if you are going to be applying for onward visas along the way.
• Motorcycle helmet. Either that, or stay off the bikes.

Useful apps

• If you haven’t already got WhatsApp, install it. Everyone uses it and it’s handy for planning with guides and drivers and so on.
• Google Translate with a French dictionary loaded.
• The XE app is great for exchange rates. Set the currencies you need in advance and you can use it offline.
• Maps.me. Download the map for Senegal to your phone in advance. Also works offline.

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To read more about our adventures (and misadventures) in Senegal, check out my stories from the road.

Or, follow the entire trip from Dakar to Freetown.

The post Senegal Travel Guide: Dakar and the Southern Coast appeared first on WhirledAway.

I’d only arrived in Monrovia myself a day or so earlier, from Senegal. Already tired of winter (a bad sign, in November), I’d lit out for our annual African escape ten days ahead of Oyv. I spent the extra time on my own drifting from one fishing village to another on the coast of Senegal.

I’d been to Senegal before with Oyv when we decided in a moment of insanity to roadtrip – by public transport – from Dakar down to Freetown, in Sierra Leone. One thing led to another and that turned out to be the first of a repeating pattern. Exhibit A, this trip we’re on right now, the fourth year in a row. This time we’re overlanding from Liberia to Cote d’Ivoire. Every year we have the same conversation:

Sar: So, where do you think we should go in December?
Oyv: The Philippines? Beautiful beaches.
Sar: They drive so sensibly. I don’t think there’s even a risk of malaria there. How about India?
Oyv: Everything is so orderly and the food is delicious, so no. Japan?
Sar: But it’s so clean. Belize?
Oyv: (shuddering) To sit on a swing and take Instagram photos? Let’s go back to West Africa.
Sar: I have been feeling awfully comfortable and well-rested. I need a break.

And so here we go again.

Senegal isn’t really that far from Liberia, but it took me three flights landing in Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea on the way to finally reach Monrovia.

The airport was quiet, two main rooms and only one luggage belt. I filled out my landing card and documents in hand, surveyed the three queues for passport control: ‘Liberians’, ‘VIPs and Diplomats’, and ‘Resident Aliens’. There was no queue for people like me who thought for no apparent reason that Liberia seemed like a prime holiday destination. I collected my bag under a prominent sign warning ‘Alcoholism Strictly Prohibited. Be Aware of the Consequences’. A security guard swung open a big rusty gate and I emerged blinking into the hot humid sunshine.

My ride was waiting for me – Joshua, a driver from the guesthouse, spotted me pretty easily. He took charge of me and my backpack, bundling us into his car. We drove for an hour past little villages in bright green fields and banana plantations. Then we hit traffic and it was nearly an hour more until Joshua dropped me off. I was tired; but there was no revival at the Lamb’s Kingdom that night at least, so I slept well and then spent the next day acclimatizing to yet another messy new city.

‘Almighty God, Merciful Heaven!’ Amen. The crusades wound down next door and Oyv arrived, without his backpack which had evidently remained in Copenhagen or possibly Casablanca. No one knew where – the airport staff didn’t have a computer to trace it on. But he had wisely packed some flip-flops in his carry on, so he was ready to face Monrovia and its sweaty humid heat.

Monrovia is not really that big – it’s a city of just under 2 million people. In places it looks like nothing so much as a sprawling village of tin-roofed shacks, brightly painted buildings and broken jagged sidewalks.

The streets heave with people and vendors, overwhelming traffic and the shouting, honking and screeching that comes with it. A different song blasts from speakers set up every few metres outside shops. Not to mention from churches, also every few metres. I’m not sure the number of churches in Monrovia but on a Sunday morning praise music echoes in the streets.

Although we generally tend to avoid spending much time in major African cities, we as usual had things to do here. We needed to trace down and collect Oyv’s missing luggage for starters, and we also needed to apply for visas at the Cote d’Ivoire Embassy.

So we stayed, and in between errands we went to the Ducor Palace Hotel. One of the first luxury hotels in West Africa, the Ducor was built in 1960 in response to a burgeoning clientele of affluent international visitors and VIPs. At the time it was one of just a few five-star hotels on this whole continent. It drew important guests from many African countries too: Idi Amin himself (the monstrous Ugandan dictator) among others. But a bloody coup in 1989 signaled the start of nearly 15 years of civil war, inspired by Liberia’s former President Charles Taylor. The Ducor closed its doors in the midst of the violence and fell into ruin, along with the rest of the tourism industry here.

Under siege in 2003, the hotel wasn’t of much use – except for Taylor’s army snipers, who used the Ducor’s position on a hilltop overlooking the city to their advantage. In 2007 the new government evicted squatters from the hotel and planned to refurbish it but that never happened. And even as Liberia recovered from war, Ebola struck and the disease hit the already beleaguered country hard.

Today the hotel compound is fenced off, surrounded by loops of barbed wire. With our offer of a few dollars the security guard grudgingly allowed us inside. We stood on the terrace near the peeling diving board and looked at the empty pool Idi Amin once swam laps in – while carrying his gun, as the story goes.

We went inside what must have been an impressive lobby, its floor to ceiling windows now just empty frames. Lingering on the sweeping staircase leading to the next floor, it’s easy to imagine infamous dictators making grand entrances.

We climbed up eight floors of empty rooms and lounges to the roof.

There’s a brilliant view from the terrace at the top – Monrovia below and all around.

The silent ruin testifies to a prosperous past and dashed hopes for the future.

Like the Ducor itself, nothing much feels permanent around here.

But Liberia keeps on keeping on. We’re here, aren’t we? Visiting a small and relatively unknown country because something about this part of the world keeps bringing us back, again and again.

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Check out the rest of my stories from the road, for more of our adventures (and misadventures) in Liberia and Senegal.

The post Liberia: Nothing’s Permanent appeared first on WhirledAway.

After 45 minutes of waiting and wondering if we should just stroll down the road a few more metres and cross illegally into Guinea-Bissau, a metal door around the corner of the building clanged open and the locals rushed it, and so did we.

There began a somewhat confusing sequence of queues and being waved around and dismissed by various officials and soldiers. An officer called out ‘Toubab!’ and pointed to my bag. I unpacked almost the entire contents before he was satisfied that I wasn’t carrying anything he could possibly demand a bribe for. A customs official pointed at a pair of handcuffs hanging on the wall, crossed his wrists tightly and then pantomimed being hauled off crying.

This is all probably fine if you speak French, Spanish, Portuguese or any other colonial European language, but Norway didn’t colonise anybody, and the Brits weren’t meddling (much) in this neck of the woods so it’s all Greek to us.

Back on the road our bus crawled slowly to the capital, Bissau. It was a beautiful drive, and my favourite kind – there are very few vehicles and the disastrous condition of the roads prevents drivers from otherwise driving much like a kamikaze pilot would fly a plane.

The old part of Bissau is a ghost town, an abandoned relic of the Portuguese colonial days left to disintegrate in the hot sun.

The streets are cracked and sandy and hulking vultures pick over piles of rubbish.

The new town is a bustling marketplace maze and a transport hub.

There may not be much to do in Bissau, but you can cross the road without being mown down, and roam the streets in peace and stay in a dingy dive without feeling nervous, and that makes it my new favourite city.

Travel to Guinea-Bissau is not totally straightforward. ATMs won’t accept our cards outside of Bissau or can’t be relied on, so we’d brought cash in both USD and Euro. Quite a bit, in fact:

No ATMs means there’s no shortage of black market money-changers wandering around muttering ‘Cambio – Change – Dollars – Euros?’ when we pass by. So we took 1000 Euros from our stash and went for a walk. We huddled with a few money-changers and their interested friends, calculators out. We had too much cash to handle in the street so the lead broker escorted us into a shop selling men’s jeans in big stacks. We arranged the money in piles on the stack of jeans and counted it, shook hands all around and Oyv and I departed with our new thick bundle of local cash.

We needed to figure out how to get to the Bijagos Archipelago, but when we asked the owner at our guesthouse when the public boat goes out to the main island, he answered ‘They don’t know. They should know, but they don’t.’ Our only option was to go to the port and ask around.

On the appointed day we watched from the dock as they loaded the pirogue – a long shallow wooden boat – with sacks of cement, ice, random freight, and a Unicef motorbike.

We climbed onto a fishing boat, then clambered onto the roof of the pirogue, wobbled our way forward to the bow and dropped from there to the deck.

We took our seats: me wedged partially underneath a bag of ice and Oyv perched on top of a sack of oranges.

Nearly 5 slow hours later we scaled a rusty barnacle encrusted ladder up onto the dock on the main island, Bubaque.

We’d read about a local place in the village serving, of all things, really good pizza. Since the village was a dusty rubbish-strewn strip lined with shacks, pigs and goats snuffling in the dirt, we were happily surprised when we opened the gate and found ourselves in a quiet beautiful garden overlooking the ocean. This oasis was decorated with strings of shells and wooden beads, and filled with the soft tinkling of wind chimes swinging in the breeze.

We hadn’t eaten since breakfast (a regular occurrence on these long-haul days) and we told the Spanish owner so. He pulled a face and informed us that getting food on the island ‘is complicated’. He’d have some fish by dinner time, he hoped, and he was almost ecstatic over finding 5 tomatoes in the market earlier that day.

T.I.A (This Is Africa) and all that, but hey, we love a good pizza or at least, we love not starving. We stared at each other in mutual horror when we thought of going hungry all night or worse, eating soggy biscuits for dinner.

On the islands, it’s not just tricky to get food – we quickly found out everything is complicated.

That night as we ate our fish at the Spaniard’s, a highly excited villager raced in and accosted our host who ran out the gate brandishing a fire extinguisher – so we jumped up and followed them down the road. The town’s museum was on fire, the only defence some hoses the locals were struggling to hook up and the fire extinguisher, which was exhausted completely after one ineffectual blast. We stood with the villagers and watched the building burn. The passports, documents, money, and worst of all – two months of footage, photos and interviews belonging to some French students making a documentary went up in flames.

We met a UN police officer dealing with drug- and human-trafficking, and some French expats trying to promote responsible tourism. They told us that the President has fired the Prime Minister and the entire Cabinet 5 times in two years – most recently just a few days ago – despite the protests of the international community. Guinea-Bissau has been plagued by one military coup and presidential assassination after another; ruined buildings serve as reminders of devastating conflict, and the fledgling democracy remains ever unstable, neatly highlighted by our guidebook’s casual reference that it’s safe to visit here ‘unless the country has descended into war’. As it is right now, it seems the biggest problem for visitors is the regular blackouts that plunge entire towns into darkness, and the ever-present possibility of falling into a hole in a disintegrating street.

To go the long beach on the other side of the island, we travelled 18 kms through the forest in a trailer attached to a motorcycle, kids running behind screaming ‘Branco, branco!!’ (‘White’, in Portuguese).

We stayed at a wildly overpriced beach camp but …it’s complicated. Nearly everything needs to be imported here, many things shipped in from as far away as Portugal.

It’s beautiful, the most deserted of desert islands I’ve ever seen:

Walking for kilometers up the beach every day we only ran into a few locals and a couple of cows.

Of course, travelling in this archipelago is complicated so island hopping is not really an option – the public boats run rarely if ever and we lost track of the number of times we heard that a boat doesn’t work, or is broken, or stopped.

We did get to the next island, Rubane, by speedboat. When it was time to go back to the mainland, the hotel sent us by private plane from a dirt airstrip fringed with palms:

None of this comes cheaply and so the islands don’t tend to draw many backpackers, and the poor infrastructure and lack of development seem to limit tourism all around. For us, that’s fine – we had the beaches and forests to ourselves. For the locals trying to run businesses, it’s another story.

But what is travel without complications; it’s just that much more rewarding when you do arrive at one of West Africa’s best-kept secrets.

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Check out the rest of my stories from the road, for more of our adventures (and misadventures) in Guinea-Bissau and Senegal.

The post Guinea Bissau: It’s Complicated appeared first on WhirledAway.

We wanted to go to Cap Skirring, a town on the beach, and every tout in the vicinity knew it too. They swarmed us instantly with persistent offers of transport, accommodation, food, currency exchange and so on. We shook them off, but despite our best efforts it seems nearly impossible to do anything at all without inadvertently engaging the services of at least one. So, our latest new friend and his ‘assistant’ close on our heels, we set about arranging the next leg of our journey.

We tried to change some money without his assistance – but he was there with his calculator briskly tapping the buttons. We tried to buy some water, but the ‘assistant’ materialised beside us at the market stall, helpfully repeating the price after the shopkeeper. We looked for the mini busses heading to Cap Skirring but he was there, waving tickets and tugging our packs off our backs, shepherding us towards the bus. Even as we settled into our seats he was there, leaning through the window asking for a payment for his services. We didn’t ask for his help (quite the opposite in fact) and all of us knew perfectly well he’d already made money off us via commission on the money changing and on the bus tickets. As for the assistant, he’d done nothing more than follow us to the stall and back. This all may sound like a nuisance but it’s just the way these kind of transactions work. There seems to be some kind of complicit understanding that travellers like us are fair game, and the bus drivers and others working there in an official capacity turn a blind eye and leave us to negotiate the totally arbitrary cost of bringing our backpacks along with us on the trip.

We were now travelling in Senegal’s once-troubled Cassamance region. Like an incision on the map, The Gambia cuts the Cassamance off from the rest of the country and there has long been a separatist movement here, bringing fighting and unrest. Bouncing down the roads in our rusty sept-place we passed through one military checkpoint after another, getting out to show our passports to the soldiers hunkering down behind sandbags.

The local people have resisted outside influence and authority starting with France’s colonial administration and in more recent years, that of the Senegalese government. This eventually led to a cycle of civil wars and shaky ceasefires until a successful peace agreement was reached in 2004.

The conflict and then the sporadic road banditry that followed of course took its due toll on tourism, and for a time foreign governments warned their citizens against visiting the Cassamance. For many local people the collapse of the tourist industry they depended on was as bad as the fighting itself. The French expat running our guesthouse said that as if the political difficulties in the Cassamance weren’t enough of a problem, when followed by the Ebola outbreak – a faraway phenomenon here – businesses like his slowed nearly to a stop. But the tourists and travellers are returning, not to mention the guesthouses, restaurants and services to support them.

We were happy. It’s a beautiful spot, we had a friendly guesthouse to stay at and a long beach to lounge on.

Tourism is back but there’s still a rough edge to the place that makes it interesting. We spent time wandering up and down the beach and Oyv managed to get himself into – and win – a pushup contest.

We quickly got used to being addressed as ‘toubab’ – shouts of ‘toubab, toubab’ accompany us wherever we go. It’s a more or less friendly term for a (white) person of European descent. We met several Gambians here, instantly recognisable to us since they could speak English well and seem to like befriending travellers – sorry, toubabs – for no other reason than to speak it.

One day we hired a motorbike and set off to do some exploring. Hiring the bike was a feat in and of itself and only accomplished at all thanks to ‘My French’ which was good enough to argue down an inflated price, at least. The bike came with two helmets but these were just a token to make the police happy. They were not in any way meant to protect us – there were no chin straps so we just perched them ineffectually on our heads, and took off. In just a few moments, we’d left Cap Skirring – more or less a one-street town anyway – behind.

And we were all by ourselves in the Cassamance.

Our bike was in no better shape than any other vehicle we’d been in so far, and we chugged along on sandy roads and forest trails, getting off to push sometimes on the climb back up from long empty beaches. For such a small vehicle the bike turned out to be real gas guzzler and we sputtered into a little town on fumes. Soon enough two local teenagers understood our problem and led us through the village to a house where we bought this litre of fuel in a gin bottle:

…from these kids:

They seemed happy to make the sale – I’m sure they made a great profit selling gasoline in a gin bottle to two toubabs.

We walked back to the bike and filled the tank, then returned the bottle to the kids.

Then we punctured the tire and ended up taking it to this garage where the mechanic (once we tracked him down after his prayers and a lengthy lunch) patched the tire for 2000 CFAs (3 Euros).

And that was not the end of our vehicular problems either. The next day we decided to leave Cap Skirring. A sept-place driver tried hard to convince us to come with him but his car was still empty. We knew that meant waiting for it to fill up with passengers – there is no set schedule for departures. We spied a transport-misto (literally, ‘Mixed Transport’ – whatever that means) nearly full and we got on it instead. The mini bus made it out of town and over the bridge and then with an ominous thump and a shudder it coasted to a permanent stop and we all abandoned ship (the roadsides are littered with the rusted out carcasses of vehicles which have met a similar fate). We sat on the embankment, waiting. The sept-place sailed by – rather triumphantly I felt – leaving us in the dust. Eventually we were shunted onto another bus, stopped to pick not a person but a single, live chicken, and we were on our way again.

Back in Ziguinchor, our old friend the helpful tout and his youthful sidekick greeted us exuberantly. We were happy to see them both, in a way, but employed our favourite tactic of refusing to reveal our destination and instead saying only, ‘it’s a secret’.

Another tout took it upon himself to point us to the front seat and demanded money. I was ready for another breakdown, this time of the nervous variety. I asked the tout if his job was to harass passengers at the bus station. Either he misunderstood me, or he was overcome by a fit of honesty – because he answered ‘Yes’.

Leaving the country seemed like the only way to escape this tout for once and for all. And as it happens, we were doing just that – the bus (if it ever started) would take us to the border with Guinea-Bissau and we’d make our next move into the unknown.

Read More

For more of our adventures (and misadventures) in Senegal, check out the rest of my stories from the road. To help you out with the details, I’ve also written a travel guide about Senegal.

The post Toubabs on the Road: Hiring a Motorbike in the Casamance appeared first on WhirledAway.

Arriving in Senegal, we found the immigration officer napping under his desk. He crawled out to stamp everybody in, and so our trip began.

Dakar, the capital, turned out to be a pleasant surprise. We’d expected another overwhelming African city but once we’d dropped our backpacks off at a hotel and ventured out, we found it anything but. The streets were relatively quiet, dusty and scruffy, and traffic was thankfully low-key. In search of something to eat, we noticed that Norwegian cuisine has (believe it or not) had some kind of influence here:

We ordered hummus and baba ganouj, but it’s good to know Norwegian visitors to Senegal won’t have to starve.

But many of the visitors to this former French colony are from France, and the local people speak French, and it wasn’t long before we started to wonder if in all of our travels it has ever been this hard for us to communicate. We are relying almost entirely on vague hand gestures and ‘My French’ – which consists of a few greetings, days of the week, numbers, kinds of food (that’s pretty vital, actually) and some other random and totally useless words I can recall, such as ‘vernis a ongles’ (nail polish). ‘Oyv’s French’ is strictly limited to ‘Voulez-vous couchez avec moi ce soir’, so that’s not really coming in handy.

One of the things we did in Dakar was visit Ile de Goree, a small island just 20 minutes from the city by ferry. There are no cars there, only a little beach and sandy streets, and pretty colourful buildings slowly crumbling under the weight of trailing bougainvillea.

This peaceful, sunny island has a dark past: under the Europeans it was a slaving station during the 18th and 19th centuries. The most famous building is the Maison des Esclaves, where captives brought from all over Africa were kept in dungeon-like storerooms on the ground floor. A door in the back of the house opens directly onto the rocky shore and the ocean beyond.

Although it’s unlikely that any people were actually loaded onto the slave ships from this door – the rocks would have prevented any ship coming close – the empty doorway now symbolises the haunting point of no return for the desperate people who caught their last glimpse of home through it, from the crowded ships delivering them into a life of slavery.

The next day, we cabbed to the chaotic bus station. Before letting us loose in the crowds, our considerate cabbie pantomimed a security briefing. He dramatically patted all his pockets several times and looked around in exaggerated alarm and confusion. He stared grimly at me to make sure this message was received, and waved us cheerily on our way.

We were looking for the sept-places bound for Banjul. A sept-place is an old (and I mean really, really old) station wagon, unfit for the road in every possible way.

We piled into one with 5 other passengers: surprisingly, the name sept-place – seven seater – is more or less respected, if you don’t count the driver and 3 kids also in the car. With a heap of luggage tied to the roof, we set off at a fast clip and zoomed down the highway. Oyv and I were the only passengers digging down under the seats hoping for seatbelts (a totally futile exercise) and lavishly applying sunscreen.

We were heading for Senegal’s Cassamance region and we figured the fastest way to get there meant cutting straight across The Gambia, a sliver of a country sometimes no more than 35 km across, surrounded entirely by Senegal. We’d read that The Gambia is ‘a splinter in Senegal’s side, or the tongue that makes it speak’, depending on who you talk to. We talked to a lot of Gambians and for us, it’s definitely the latter. In The Gambia, once a British colony, they speak English and life instantly became a lot easier for us.

We went looking for a place to stay in Banjul, the tiny capital city. A man lying on a mattress in the street out front of the Princess Diana Hotel did not get up, yet nevertheless welcomed us with a regal sweep of his arm towards the door, and so we checked in.

We were soon befriended by the local hangers-on outside. Tommy and Bobby pulled up chairs for us, made us tea, and shared their dinner. We sat around for a couple of hours, talking and laughing, and quickly learned Bobby’s favourite – and The Gambia’s famous – phrase ‘It’s nice to be nice’.

The ‘Smiling Coast’ of every tourist advert, The Gambia does a booming trade in mass market tourism, focused around the Senegambia Strip. Big hotels, restaurants and bars clutter the long beach. Musicians drum and dance, and hawkers flog horse rides and wooden souvenirs.

Along with cheap drinks and questionable food, we saw the darker side to The Gambia’s tourist industry: the ‘Bumsters’. Counterparts to the young local girls seen hand-in-hand with old western men in many parts of Southeast Asia, Bumsters are young local guys with middle-aged European sugar mamas. When they haven’t got a lady friend on the go, Bumsters lurk outside hotels and try persistently to attach themselves as guides – wanted, needed, or not – to any passing tourist. Apparently, women visiting alone can expect steady attention and dedicated pursuit from these guys who, on the other hand, are only responding to an apparently significant demand.

But, ‘It’s nice to be nice’ is definitely The Gambia’s slogan. Besides our friendly acquaintances at the Princess Di, everywhere we go we find a smiling person who will help us out or just pass the day with a bit of chit chat. And hey, the Bumsters and hustlers are pretty nice too, after all.

Our main motive in travelling through the Gambia was to visit the two very casual embassies of Sierra Leone and Guinea-Bissau. Embassies tend to move around here, and so they were not at the last known addresses we’d found online. Determining the actual locations involved a lengthy chat with the guy at the shop where we ate breakfast who consulted a police officer, a few taxi drivers and some pedestrians in the street. We are used to this sort of thing: we don’t have any business to mind anymore because everyone else minds it for us. Finding the embassies was the hard part; our visas processed surprisingly fast, given the amount of fuss when we tried to apply in advance from home. It seems the closer you get to the country in question , the more lax the rules become. No one demanded references, invitations, plane tickets, proposed itineraries, or proof of funds. One consular officer dismissed my proffered yellow fever vaccination certificate with a bored wave of his hand. We aren’t the only ones looking for visas either…I’m now penpals with a police officer working at one of the embassies who is at least as keen on my country as I am on his.

Happy with these two new visa labels in our passports, we were ready to carry on. The owner of the Princess Diana hotel spontaneously volunteered to drive us two towns over and dropped us off at the market, wishing us a safe journey – because, you know, it’s nice to be nice. We wrestled our backpacks into yet another crowded sept-place, and set off to the next border with Senegal.

Read More

For more of our adventures (and misadventures) in Senegal, check out the rest of my stories from the road.  To help you out with the details, I’ve also written a travel guide about Senegal.

The post West Africa: It’s Nice to be Nice appeared first on WhirledAway.