2025 Vacation Senegal Highlights (2 of 3)
Let the Fun Begin!
After a fun couple of days in our nation’s capital, we made our way to Dulles Airport. I used my Priority Pass at IAD to visit the Turkish lounge. After our meal, we caught our one flight to Madrid, Spain before continuing on to Senegal. On the leg to Madrid, Suazette and I sat in business class on the A321 while the children flew in economy.
We were offered a dinner and a breakfast on this leg along with all of the complimentary drinks you would ever need. For dinner, I had poached prawns served with sweet pepper kohlrabi and radish salad, dressed with mayonnaise and chive oil, seared halibut in a white wine and dill sauce, served with thai rice and buttered broccolini. warm artisan bread served with organic extra virgin olive oil and butter, a selection of cheese served with quince and vanilla chutney and fresh grapes… and a coke. After dinner, I went to sleep for 3 or 4 hours. When I woke up, we were on our decent into the Madrid area. I had missed breakfast but I wasn’t complaining as I was still pretty full from the lounge and dinner.
During our 7-hour layover in Madrid, we immigrated into Spain and caught the Hop On Hop Off (HOHO) bus that rode around the historic part of Madrid. We were pretty tired during the tour but it was a great way to kill about 4 hours. After the HOHO tours, we caught the airport express bus and headed right back to the airport.
Our flight to Dakar was an A-321 Neo (I believe) with recliner first class seats, not the lie-flat seats we hopped over the pond in. (This shouldn’t be surprising since European countries typically send the worst equipment to Africa.) Luckily, this flight was only 4.5 hours long. We landed in Dakar in the evening. By the time we cleared immigration and got our bags, it was nearly 10:30 pm. Our driver picked us up and took us directly to our AirBNB. Our travel agent, Abroad with Love, had created a customized itinerary for me and my family for our Senegalese adventures.
Senegal
I invited my good friend from graduate school (and groomsman) and his family to accompany us on this trip. Their family of 5 based in Columbia, MD booked their flights (connecting through Rome) and arrived in Senegal the day before we did. It was very cool to be able to share these travel experiences with colleagues. It definitely made the trip more enjoyable.
Dakar City Tour
On the first day, our tour guide took us on a guided city tour where we saw landmarks like the Place de White House and parliament, Cathedral of Dakar, an artisanal village, and the Mosque of the Divinity. We also visited the African Renaissance Monument and the Point de Almadies (which is the westernmost point of Africa). Once the tour was over, we returned to our respective accommodations and had the rest of the evening to spend on our own.
Goree Island / Museum of Black Civilization
On the next day, we boarded a very choppy ferry (think roller coaster with each passing wave) headed to Goree Island. This island houses one of the last remaining slave houses in West Africa. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and played a major role in the transatlantic slave trade. This island was the last glimpse of the continent that many captives would ever see. To be sure: this island was heart-wrenching. To walk the same narrow colorful corridors in the island that my forefathers no doubt walked was humbling. But my experience as an outsider must’ve been completely different than the captured Africans walking these same streets. While I stopped to admire the colors of the buildings on the island and to take a selfie (my guide later informed us that the color of each building represented a colonial power – Portuguese, Dutch, French, Spanish, and English), my ancestors were chained together and dragged to a cell, underneath the house (that I was just admiring) where their captors ate, drank, and partied as if dozens of humans were not rotting underneath their floor boards.
I walked into the cell where they packed 15 grown men in a room half the size of my bedroom. Next to it was the cell for women and next to that cell was the cell for young girls. These young girls hardly ever made the transatlantic treck. Rather, after being raped, their lot was to serve their captors on the island and raise their masters’ offspring.
Even though the men, women, and children were housed in rooms next to each other, they never saw or heard from each other again. Before heading to the New World, the men were weighed. Those over 60 kg were deemed fit enough to make the journey and were loaded onto cargo ships as cattle. (Despite this, many men died en route and were tossed overboard to become shark food). The men who were underweight were sent to a different fattening room where they tried to fatten them up to the required weight. (The similarity to fattening up cattle before the slaughter cannot be ignored). After a while, they were reweighed. Those that made the cut were shipped off. Those that didn’t… well, let’s just hope they made the cut.
We also saw the Door of No Return. This is a small doorway at the end of a dark tunnel that led to the Atlantic Ocean. This is the door that the slaves would exit to board the ships to the New World. Once an African walked through that door, their life as they knew it completely changed. As we walked through the Door of No Return, I imagined how our ancestors must have felt right at that point losing their identity. The ones headed to Brazil were given Portuguese names. The ones headed to America were given English names. The ones headed to Hispaniola were given Spanish names. It was clear that the slave owners did not see our ancestors as human.
Again, the dichotomy of my presence on this island was hard to square. On one hand, I have returned to the place where many of my ancestors most likely left the continent to start a new life as property. On the other hand, I was a visiting tourist, snapping pictures of pretty architecture, nicely framed images, and ocean views – like any photographer would capture. To be sure, the tension between the two realities was palpable.
What’s left to say after such an experience? We did go upstairs in the slave house where the captors would be. The back deck looks out on the vast expanses of the Atlantic. That view is the envy of 5-star resorts worldwide. And yet, there it was. Outside of one of the most evil houses I have ever visited – and that includes the several plantations I’ve visited here in the US. It’s funny how perspective can alter your view of the same thing. Upstairs, the Atlantic brings thoughts of a 5-star resort. Downstairs, the Atlantic brings thoughts of huge swells, death, carnage, long voyages, and captivity.
After leaving the slave house, we stopped by a cathedral where the captors worshipped the God who came to set the captives free. Ironic, I know. As we returned to the ferry port, we stopped by a couple of shops where locals were hacking their goods. Once again, the tension between being a descendant of slaves and being a tourist was palpable.
After lunch on the island, we took the ferry back to the mainland with a clearer understanding of the trauma that our ancestors endured. Once back on the mainland, we drove a few minutes away to the Museum of Black Civilization, sponsored and created by the Chinese (no typo). The museum captured all things Black across the diaspora. It was a nice place but I think its impact was muted because we had visited Goree Island first. I think if we had visited the museum first, I’d have more positive things to say about it. Looking back now, nothing really stood out to me in the museum. We headed home after the museum visit. Once again, the evening was left open to do what we wanted. I don’t think we did anything else once we returned to our AirBNB. The atmosphere was still too heavy. We’d leave the tourism stuff for the next day.
Ngor Island
After such a heavy experience on Goree Island, we needed some down time to decompress. The next day, we had a beach day at Ngor Island. The island is pretty small so we were able to take a quick tour of the island in about 45 minutes before all of the beachgoers made it out too. Other than a nice overlook and some street art, there wasn’t much to see on Ngor.
Clearly, the beach is the star of the show there. We spent all day and afternoon lounging in the beach chairs while RJ spent his time frolicking in the water like 8-year olds do. We finished our island tour at about 11:15 am and waited until 4:30ish to try the Senegalese national dish from this one specific lady on the island that our tour guide said makes the best dishes. She did not disappoint. The wait was well worth it.
The meal consisted of fish, rice, and root vegetables, and was served in one large bowl with six spoons. The five of us and our tour guide ate directly from the bowl. The sense of belonging to West Africa that I had at this moment was undeniable. This experience would have been missed if we hadn’t slowed down and waited the nearly 5 hours for the meal to be prepared – Senegalese style.
Our “beach day,” included the mandatory sun, ocean, lounge chairs, food, slow-pace, and relaxation. In addition, you can add massage and souvenirs to the list. While RJ was enjoying himself in the Atlantic, Suazette, Sariah, and I were taking it easy in our rented beach chairs. Makayla, RJ’s second mama and big sis, spent her time running between us and RJ to either check on his well-being, report to us something that he was doing that she thought we wouldn’t approve of or playing with him.
We had the beach to ourselves for the first hour or so. This was the most relaxing time. However, by midday, more beachgoers began to show up. While I successfully turned down about 32,184 potential merchants selling everything from trinkets to art, two of them got me. The first guy managed to convince Suazette and Sariah to let him give Sariah a foot massage. The foot massage looked like a relaxing one. It was pretty cheap (about the cost of a cup of coffee) and pretty long. Regardless, I kept one eye on the dude as he rubbed my daughter’s feet.
The second guy came along while Suazette and Sariah were distracted with the foot massage. He was selling art pieces. Many of his prints were nice but I wasn’t convinced that they were authentic. They very well could have been prints mass produced in China. But I wasn’t interested in them enough to inspect and investigate them in detail. I just knew I wasn’t going to buy them. These guys know who to solicit because neither offered me anything. I just lounged in my chair while they gave their best spiel to the girls. The massage dude pointing to Sariah’s fingernails and saying in broken English, “too long.” The art dude squatted in front of our beach chairs as he pulled out a dozen items to show, hoping to make a sale. Some wood carvings caught the girls’ eyes. Sariah zeroed in on a wood carved dish in the shape of Africa. She wanted to put her rings and bracelet on it. Suazette took a fancy to a wooden statue of a giraffe (that magically became two once price negotiations started). At this point, I awakened from my partial nap to hear a pathetic job of negotiations on my family’s part. I felt that they could get what they wanted for about half the price he quoted. So, I interjected at this point and told him no. It was too much. After 20 minutes of Camp David level negotiations, I ended up paying about 10,000 more African francs than he had originally quoted. But… I also got an extra giraffe and two female statues included in the price. I’d say that was a win-win-win for all parties involved. (After being home for a few days, I realize it wasn’t actually a win for me. I did manage to release myself of some francs I had no intention of converting back once I left the country. But when I got home, I realized that my suitcase was partially unpacked. All my clothes and shoes were still in the suitcase but nothing else. I did notice that two tall wooden statues of a Senegalese women now grace both sides of the front table in my foyer and an Africa-shaped wood carving on Suazette’s dresser now contains 3 or 4 of her rings.)
About an hour after finishing lunch, we caught a boat back to the mainland. We headed straight back to the AirBNB where we were content to spend the rest of the evening without trying to go anywhere else. What I remember most about this evening was ordering dinner via What’s App. I decided to order a pizza from the restaurant that our friends had ordered from their first day. So, I contacted them on What’s App. Surprisingly, I reached someone who knew a bit of English or who utilized the Google Translate English edition enough to place an order.
Unfortunately, communicating through the app became tedious. So they called me to finish my order. When I asked if the pizzas could feed 4 people, they said no. They were “personal size.” So, I ordered 4 figuring RJ could share with the 4 of us. When the pizza showed up, I had 4 full size pizzas. So moral of the story: never believe a Senegalese when they say something is “personal size.” After pizza, we hit the sack. The following day was the day that I’d completely embarrass myself.
Painting Class
After our restful day at Ngor Beach, we were scheduled to take a painting class. This class was not on our original itinerary. Rather, it was a replacement for a cooking class that unfortunately was cancelled. Each of us was given a canvass, some paint, and was told to paint whatever we wanted. I was expecting an actual painting class with instruction (or all of us paint some object) because I do not have an artistic bone in my body. Ultimately, it was fun. I had to convince myself that the two lines I randomly drew on the canvass could become a tree. But when my tree was too big, I made it a volcano. I forgot all of my photography composition techniques – no Rule of Thirds, no decentering the main subject, no foreground or background interest – just a blob of paint on a canvass. We left the studio with one stellar painting (from Sariah the artist), two good ones (from Makayla and RJ), one abstract one (from Suazette), and my blob volcano.
Home Visit
In the afternoon, we headed over to our travel agent’s house where we were given a home cooked meal. I had bragged the day before on how good the national dish was that the cook on Ngor Island was. Our travel agent took this as either a challenge or insult (not sure which) and informed us (in not so many words) that she could go round for round with that lady. I’m not sure she was ready to cede the title of Best Cook in Dakar so easily. She welcomed the 10 of us with warm African hospitality. She also made the national dish for us but she had used a different thicker, meatier fish. It was indeed very tasty. We helped ourselves to seconds (and thirds).
After dinner, our travel agent presented Sariah with a Happy 16th birthday cake. This was an extraordinary display of Senegalese hospitality (or maybe just exceeding your client’s expectations). Early on during our planning phase, I had casually mentioned to her that one of the reasons why we were traveling was to celebrate Sariah’s birthday.
Our initial plan was to spend a week in Senegal then the following week in Ghana. We fully expected to spend Sariah’s birthday somewhere in Ghana. Unfortunately, Kenya Airways cancelled our fifth freedom flight between Senegal and Ghana. Our 2.5 hour direct flight between Dakar and Accra was replaced with a flight leaving two days later connecting through Nairobi, Kenya (nearly 6 hours away on the other side of the continent). We didn’t want to lose two days off of our vacation (and potentially a third dealing with jet lag), so we abandoned Ghana and replaced it with a different location (you have to stay tuned to find out where exactly). In subsequent conversations, I let my travel agent know of our pivot and that we would have to spend her birthday somewhere else. To be sure, her birthday was the week after we were scheduled to leave Senegal but our agent threw a mini-celebration for my daughter, a girl she had just met, right there in her dining room. That’s classy. Five stars in my book. To top it off, when we were leaving, our travel agent gave us all some “to-go” plates too which was much appreciated.
After our painting class and dinner at our travel agent’s place, our tour guide dropped us off at the Courtyard Dakar Diamniadio. We really enjoyed our AirBNB but it was closer to central Dakar then to the airport. I decided to cut one day off of our AirBNB reservation and reserve a day in the Courtyard because it was only 15 minutes away from the Blaise DSS Diagne International Airport. Not only was the hotel much closer to the airport but it also had a free airport shuttle that we took advantage of.
Our Senegal adventures was quickly drawing to a close. However, we did have one more fun filled exciting day in this unique country.
Courtyard Mini-Review
The hotel is quite new. It’s right in the middle of a new city that’s currently being built for next year’s Summer Youth Olympics games that will be held in Dakar. Because of this, security at this property was tight. The hotel was very modern and obviously clean but across the street was dirt fields and cement structures of buildings. The area was so new that there is no public transportation (including busses, taxis, and Ubers) to the area. There were also no malls, streets, restaurants, or general things to do outside the hotel. The Courtyard was truly an oasis in the middle of nothing. In 1-2 years, the hotel will be prime real estate and the rack rates will no doubt skyrocket.
While the hotel is brand spanking new, the rooms are small (especially for a Courtyard). The rooms with the king bed could only house two adults. The one with two queens could (theoretically) house four. We just spent the better part of a week in a 3-bedroom AirBNB. We would be on top of each other if we tried to jam 5 people in one room at this hotel (especially since the room did not have a pullout couch for RJ to sleep on). For our convenience and my sanity, I had reserved two rooms: one with a king bed and one with two queens. Each room cost me 23,500 Marriott Bonvoy points and 2,000 XOF (African francs, about $3.50) in taxes and fees. I also took advantage of Suazette’s expiring Free Night Certificate. She reserved a third room for just the cost of the taxes and fees. She and I shared a room with a king bed, RJ and Makayla each had a bed in the 2-queen bed room, and Sariah had a room with a king bed all to herself. (I tried to pass it along as an early birthday gift, but no dice.)
Bandia Reserve / Pink Lake
On our last day in the country, our tour guide scooped us up at our hotel. He took us and our friends to the Bandia Reserve where we saw giraffes, zebras, and buffalos among other animals. A reserve is somewhere between a zoo and a safari. The animals are fenced in but they are in their natural habitat (in this case, a savannah). In addition, no predatory animals roam the reserve. Only animals that can live in harmony are there. (There were 2 hyenas there but they were caged in.) The giraffes were the highlight as they crossed the road in front of us and had absolutely no fear of humans. Unfortunately, the Big 5 are not in the reserve. We spent several hours in the reserve before participating in our last Senegalese excursion.
The reserve was obviously more intense than a zoo but I think it lacked the intensity of a true safari. Clearly, zoos have been ruined for me forever but the reserve still left me wanting more. I wouldn’t say it was much ado about nothing. I enjoyed the open air jeep ride. I enjoyed seeing the animals that I did see. I marveled at our guide’s ability to spot animals camouflaged with their surroundings. I even enjoyed hearing about the history of the reserve and ways to distinguish between males and females of the same species. Unfortunately, what seemed to be missing was predation. Call me morbid but that’s the action I want to see. I think a trip to Kenya or Tanzania, Namibia, or South Africa’s Kruger National Park might be in my near future.
After the reserve, we headed down to the Pink Lake where they harvest salt. It is a natural body of water that’s about 9 feet deep. The bottom 1.5 meters is all salt. The water is on the top of the salt. Workers stand on the salt, break it up with a stick, and put it in a basket, then pour the basket into the boat. At the end of the day, the workers will acquire about a ton of salt before heading back in several hours later. Only men do this work as they found out that the environment is harmful to women’s health.
There’s some kind of algae in the lake that is responsible for the lake’s pink color: the algae thrive in high-salt environments like it. These algae produce pigments that give the water its pinkish hue. The actual color of the water depends on factors like the concentration of the organisms, sunlight, and water temperature.
The lake is a couple of kilometers from the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean but it is completely natural. It is outside of Dakar proper as it took nearly an hour to get to it from the reserve (which itself was nearly 40 minutes outside of the city limits). Even though it was time consuming to get out here, this experience was pretty cool.
At least for us, it wasn’t a long excursion. I’d say the whole excursion from the time we got out of the van to the time we got back in was about an hour. Initially, we gathered in a shaded area near the lake where we were given about a 10 minute description of the lake. After that, we walked to the lake where each family boarded a canoe. We paddled out to the middle of the lake and watched a worker harvest two baskets full of salt. Shortly thereafter, we paddled back to the shore. Once we returned on dry land, we were hassled for about 15 minutes by locals hacking their wares. Everything from bags of salt to beads to earrings to paintings to rings to carvings were for sale. With these locals, everything was negotiable. The price you paid depended on your bargaining skills. If you were a rookie, you would get got. If not, you could get some pretty good deals, albeit on items that you never knew you needed until that point. Because I was trying to get rid of the rest of my African francs, I didn’t mind haggling over some prices. If I could get 2 or 3 items for the price of one or if I could buy some stuff for the girls and maybe add a bracelet for me or RJ, so be it. The goal was to get rid of our local currency and we were successful... kind of.
With our excursions finished for the day, it was time to get some lunch. Our tour guide was going to take us to a restaurant near the lake that had a pretty good lunch buffet. Unfortunately, they, like many other businesses in Senegal are cash only. Of course, he recommends this place as we are leaving, right after we spent copious amounts of cash buying stuff we didn’t really need. So, unfortunately, we had to pass on the buffet. Instead, we headed back in town where we found a little local spot on the side of the road. We bought some lamb gyros, burgers, and fries with the little currency we had left.
Leaving Senegal
After lunch, we hopped back in the van and headed straight back to our hotel. As a Marriott gold member, I requested and received late checkout for one of my three rooms, allowing the hotel to clean and resell the other two. Upon our arrival, we headed upstairs, grabbed our bags, and returned to the lobby to wait for our 5:00 hotel shuttle to take us straight to the airport.
We got to the airport in no time. Indeed, we may have gotten there too early. We had to wait about an hour after entering the airport because it was too early to check-in to our 9:40pm flight. Of course, we had to wait landside (with no money to buy drinks or snacks) before being allowed to check in. To be sure, just making it to your gate is an ordeal in DSS airport. There is a document check before you are even allowed to enter the airport. There is an airport/airline worker checking your passport before they let you join the check-in line. Then, once you get to the counter, the airline worker who checks you in checks your passport again. Once you get your boarding pass, you go through the security metal detectors but not before a TSA-equivalent official checks your passport again. If you are traveling domestic, this is where your insanity stops. But we weren’t. So, after security, we had to get stamped out of the country by an immigration officer – another passport check. Once you clear this stage, most people can finally put away their documents. But not us. We needed to show one more set of officials our passport – the employees who checked us in at the lounge. Well, that’s not exactly true either. We did have to show our passports one more time before boarding the plane. In total, we showed our passports to seven different officials in that airport.
Can you believe it? Loaded with trinkets, magnets, clothes, hats, other souvenirs, and a lifetime of memories, we finally boarded the plane that took us out of this country. I have to say that this was a pretty successful visit, even though RJ lost this great fan that a vendor on Goree Island gave him somewhere in the airport. That’s the only loss that I can think of. Suazette did leave a white shirt and RJ left some clothing items in our AirBNB but our tour guide collected them at our AirBNB and gave them to our friends (who were leaving 2 days after us). They mailed the items back to us and they were waiting for us when we got home.
Because our initial plans had us travel to Ghana and go home from there, we had to find a way to get to our next destination. There were no direct flights to our destination but there were flights from Madrid. This means that we would have to reposition to Madrid in enough time to catch our flights to our destination. Tired, anxious, and happy, IB 922 lifted off into the humid Dakar evening, eager to continue our vacation in another country on another continent. Still tired, still anxious, still happy, we landed in Madrid 4 hours later at 4:05am. We had to endure another 7-hour layover, but that’s the price you pay for wanting to see the world on a shoestring budget.
