Senegal travel blog - The honest travel story how it all went when traveling in Senegal and Gambia

Let’s just say my two weeks in Senegal and Gambia were different than I imagined.

I already created a Senegal guide, so that others can learn from my mistakes and do just the best parts: Senegal travel guide.

And in this article, I just want to tell all the random encounters, the good and the bad.

We started our trip with three days at the Capital Dakar. 

Dakar was weirdly the least surprising part of Senegal, although it definitely felt like organised chaos. 

What makes Dakar funny for me is the randomness due to lack of any urban planning: First there’s a newly built, modern block house, and next there's a slum where people and goats live together.

I actually really enjoyed our hotel here; it had a rooftop, nice and spacious room (I actually recorded a little pilates flow there for travels) and a good breakfast. The hotel was AfrikaWorks.

What creeped me out in Dakar though, was a completely random sound in the middle of the night that continued for hours. It probably came from some kind of megafone and sounded like a horror movie character singing. 😀

What was fun in Dakar, was visiting the Artist market; you see loads of clothes and other textiles made in the factory. 

I did not buy anything though, as all those bright tie-dye designs look so great on black people, yet make me look like a clown.

Ironically, the most beautiful building in whole Senegal was House of Slaves, in Goree island, which was former Western African Slave Trade centre.

It was interesting visit, and mainly made me wonder:

Why would a former colonised country still use the colony country language, French?

How the f*ck all these colonial countries managed to be so inhumane?

By doing this slave trading for hundreds of years, treating people like tradable goods?

How do you justify this kind of sh*t in your mind and heart?

And maintain this kind of constitution over many generations?

In general, it occasionally felt like we were the only white people traveling without any tour guide/organized trip.

We just figured it all out by ourselves, and hitchhiked to places.

We’re used to shared cars like this in Morocco, so we assumed it’s a thing over here as well. And it worked pretty well actually.

I mean, in countries like this, everything has a price, so with some nice cash you get what you need :D.

Our next destination was a stunning Villa in Saly.

This was a nice area, clearly catered for French tourists. We were the only ones who didn’t speak French as native language.

The villa was awesome, but boy we were worried where the f*ck we arrived. As the place was relatively pricey and from the outside it was hard to imagine what an oasis it was.

This is the exact Villa we stayed in - can definitely recommend this.

Occasionally this contrast made me uneasy, as it felt such a white privilege.

Senegal is an underrated Safari destination, compared to more known destinations like South Africa, Botswana and Namibia.

Yet we saw Giraffes, Zeebras, Antilopes, Monkeys, Pumbas and "Zazus" all over the place. And the entrance for two was altogether about 65€.

I did not want to have too high expectations for Bandia Safari, because it was apparently not so likely there to see that many animals.

So I was very positively surprised.

👉👉👉Best way to do the tour is simply to get yourself to the Bandia Nature Reserve Entrance early in the morning (not for real early though, as it opens at 8).

We were there actually at 9 and we were just fine.

Best thing to do is to gather a group of people to join for an 8-seater Safari car.

That way you all pay just individual entrance and share the costs of a guide and the car.

Alternatively you can also enter with your private vehicle.

It is in a way better option, as then you can go at your own pace, and you are not dependent on others to find a group to join to share the ride with.

If you are wondering how was the getting around in Senegal: it was like a sauna with wheels.

There would have been an option to book a taxi with AC via hotel, or go with a big bus, but we decided to keep things more adventurous.

We took a shared ride for our next destination.

This meant 7 people in a car from 50s.

No AC, no seat belts, just fluffy seats and doors that would completely fall off if you try to open the window.

So in the 40°C car, we kept on pouring some water to the head and pray the engine does not break the middle of nowhere.

Let’s lay it all out on the table; we often felt like second-class citizens, because we did not speak French fluently.

Our next accommodation was in Unesco world heritage area, within Magrove forests of Senegal in Saloum Delta.

The place was nice, yet other snobby French guests looked down on us and definitely did not smile.

Staff was a bit more helpful, but we had to ask every single thing by ourselves to get answers.

I could not help but notice the French influence in Senegal.

All the fancier places we stayed, offered a fully French diet, instead of even offering the option for local cuisine.

I mean, it was a bit odd eating Oysters and Baguette in Unesco world heritage site Saluom Delta in Senegal.

Okay here comes the interesting, yet most terrifying part of our trip.

We arrived with the steaming hot sauna car finally at the official border between Senegal and Gambia.

We got the stamps to our passports, and continued our way.

If you’ve been to countries like Egypt or Morocco, you can imagine how people come to your skin; one sells peanuts, other one wants to exchange cash and third one offers a taxi ride with a vehicle from Grease movie. (Although that is an insult for Greased Lightning, we’re talking more of a tin can kind of motorised engines).

Anyway, we continue our way and said a hard no to these people selling all the random stuff.

One of them continues coming to us with a random piece of paper saying “read this, read this”.

And we kept on ignoring as we got quite annoyed.

Well, next thing we see is a woman in uniform rushing to us and telling that we are illegally in Gambia and shouting what the f*ck are we doing.

Apparently this random guy in sweat pants and T-shirt was a border control official, and we would have needed to go to "office" to show our stamps.

We apologized and told this was a misunderstanding, as we did not know we had to do that. The guy got super angry at us shouting “you are not sorry, you are not sorry, you kept on telling me to go away”.

Situation was not helped by my boyfriend telling with some sassy passive-aggressive tone, how this is ridiculous and the guy should wear a uniform. I told him to stfu and do exactly as they say.

The woman took us inside a building, and the first thing we see is a jail.

They kept on walking us deeper into the dark building, and in a pitch-black room, where they would handwrite down all our passport data.

Well, luckily, the journey continued past the jail into a room, where they turned over all our luggage.

They wanted to take their dear time and check everything super carefully.

I mean makes sense, as for them it probably seemed like we’re trying to bring something illegal stuff into the country, as we accidentally kept on ignoring the border control.

My migraine medication became an issue, as in Spain we don’t get printed prescriptions anymore.

Eventually, once we waited for the boss of the employee to come, they let us go, with the migraine medicine.

It felt so scary, as we just had to perform in the situation as well as we can, and hope that we’ll be fine.

Afterwards I’ve managed to laugh at the whole situation.

For example, how they even opened my facial cream with their dirty hands; and I had tried so carefully not to let any bacteria in and take the lotion out only with the cosmetic spatula. :D

Well, that beauty effort went quickly down the drain.

We crossed the Gambia river with a ferry.

Waiting for the ferry was quite an experience. It comes as it comes, they said when we asked schedule. We waited for two hours in the warm afternoon sun (luckily in shadow though).

When the ferry finally arrived, people and vehicles disembarked from the ferry.

First buses, cars and then people started to get into the ferry.

For some reason, the gates from the waiting area we were in, were not opened.

We kept on waiting, squeezed among all the locals who also waited for a long time.

I tried to wave for an official who passed to open the gate.

Nothing happened and the flow of people entering the ferry thinned out.

My patience under the scorching sun was running out, especially when we saw all the other white people entering the ferry a long time ago.

We had no idea why they didn’t open the gate.

Eventually, one official came to open the locks and release the huge stream of us waiting, squeezed in a tiny space.

We ran from our feet as fast as we could to make it to the ferry - and managed.

It was such a bliss to arrive in Gambia.

Gambia was much more chill, people were very friendly and chill and spoke English, and everything functioned much better.

Taxi driver spoke English, and our accommodation was a nice oasis with a pool.

We ate a nice, local dinner watching sunset, being served by a super sympathetic local waiter. Finally this was the kind of laid-back Africa we were looking for.

I would definitely rather recommend traveling to Gambia, or at least combining it as part of the trip.

Chilling by the pool with a cocktail, visiting a monkey park and buying some souvenirs with the rhythm of relaxed reggae music in the background was the African vibe we expected from Senegal.

(This is the accommodation we stayed in Gambia)

However, I have some more juicier stories to tell — because perfect days rarely make the best stories!

We had to fly back to Dakar, Senegal, for one more night.

Firstly, our flight was postponed from 10pm to 1am.

We were like, inconvenient, but fine, whatever.

We went to the airport early to make sure all was well, and luckily we did.

[Narrator: all was not well.]

We had even downloaded our boarding passes, yet at the airport, they calmly let us know that we didn’t have any tickets on our account.

Seems silly, when we literally knew even our seats already, right?

Turns out the flight was overbooked, and this was apparently not the first time Air Senegal has done something like this.

Eventually we got to our flight, but it took some crying to be taken seriously and a call to Air Senegal customer support, which apparently is in some chicken coop, as we heard a rooster loudly in the background when negotiating our seats on the flight. 😀

(To be honest, I think we would still be waiting at the Gambia Airport if I did not cry some desperate tears to be taken seriously. :D After my cry, they got serious and made a call for us. But they also told me; if you cry, you don't go. That made me dry my tears fast. :D)

For the last night in Senegal, before flying back to Spain, we stayed in the nearest coastline destination from Dakar Airport.

Poponguine was a tiny village, so the amenities weren’t much, but the beach was simply amazing.

We had a long, sandy beach basically just for the two of us.

Funnily enough, our flight back to Spain happened to be on the day of national blackout.

We had no idea if our flight was happening, and whether there would be electricity in Spain.

We went to the airport regardless of the hotel personnel saying the flight is not coming and the fact that Iberia had messaged us that all the flights for the day can be refunded.

I did not want a refund, I wanted to go home.

We arrived in Madrid at 2am, delighted to see there were lights on in Madrid.

All in all the trip was not the easiest, although there were also awesome, relaxing moments in beautiful places as well, like at the Villa in Saly and the Mangrove forests of Saloum Delta.

We decided not to buy a local SIM card, as we felt like we didn't need that.

In countries like this, it is anyhow more about figuring it out on the go and asking people then and there, rather than overly planning and searching things online.

Google reviews do not help you much in these latitudes, when none of the places are listed there, and the reviews are by arrogant French neo-colonialist tourists, that are definitely not looking for the same things as I am.

The offline experience was great and refreshing, and I actually wrote a lot with my tablet and keyword solution I took with me. No browsing, no distractions, simply journaling.

Some experiences taught me more patience than yoga retreats in Asia.

The feeling when you are stuck like cattle behind the bars to get into a ferry you’ve been waiting for 2 hours in scorching sun, without any idea if you’ll get in, teaches more patience than breathwork in a luxury villa.

Although we had some tough times during the trip, it made me trust more that we always manage, no matter what.

I also felt safe, and as long as you travel and do things with common sense, people are not bad anywhere.

Everyone just wants happiness in their life, and discovering completely new cultures gives new perspectives to look at life.

If you are planning to travel to Senegal, read all the best tips in Senegal Travel Guide. Learn from my mistakes and discover tips you can’t find from AI (or even from google).

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