This blog is a free resource filled with information that we have gathered from living and traveling in West Africa. We’d love to have you on one of our trips but from one traveler to another, we are just happy to see people visiting the region.
The blog is also a reflection of our travel philosophy. It’s possible to have quite the adventure in West Africa, but we are a bit tired of reading travelogues that make it seem like walking down the street in any West African city is a death defying experience. We’d like that to think that the advice provided in these pages will help you discover West Africa on its own terms. And we hope that the stories we share offer real insight — something much more than a dramatic monologue designed for clicks and follows.
If you would like to contribute, please get in touch with us on the contact page. For more stories from the road, follow us on Instagram, Youtube and Twitter.
Some years ago it was a piece of cake to snap up a sim card right on the border, load it with credit and be on your way. Many countries have since required telecom operators to register sim cards with the purchaser. You typically need to present your passport and an...
As we mentioned on our West Africa travel basics page, traveling overland in your own vehicle affords a certain freedom and flexibility that other forms of transport do now allow. The tradeoff is that you have to deal with the authorities. Border crossings in...
South of Dakar and north of The Gambia, the Sine-Saloum is the big ticket estuary that draws visitors from around the world for fishing, bird-watching, and indulging in sundowners next to one of the many waterways. But slightly further north, and much closer to the...
The Dakar Airport used to be smack in the middle of the city. Thirty minutes after landing you could find yourself drinking a beer next to the ocean in Ngor or Almadies. That is no longer the case. The new airport (as of December 2017) is nearly 60 kilometers away....
Twenty-some kilometers inland from the Atlantic Ocean, there is a small town in Guinea-Bissau with a population of roughly 10,000 people. The town is called Cacheu, and it was one of the first colonial settlements in sub-saharan Africa. It served as a port for the...