Starting from an hour’s south of Banjul at a last minute villa I found on Booking.com in Old Yundum, we set out at 6:30am in the morning. Good timing because we started driving approximately 5 minutes right after the power went out in the house from what was likely a rolling blackout.
Our plan today:
A gorgeous dawn kicked things off:
While gazing at the sunrise, we drove about 45 minutes to the Giboroh immigration post on the Gambia-Senegal border.
Yep, we’re heading back into Senegal in its southern part as The Gambia is sandwiched between the backwards C shape of Senegal’s landmass like a Pac-Man eating its power pellets.
First, we needed to stamp out of Gambia.
We then walked across to the Senegalese border town of Séléti where an angry border officer almost confiscated my phone thinking I was taking photos when I was actually checking my email. Luckily we sweet talked him into returning my phone before we scampered off and had a collective heart to heart on the challenges we had been experiencing so far as a group road-tripping through West Africa.
Lesson learned: If you ever find yourself in the situation, play along and don’t stir the pot.
We then continued onwards to Ziguinchor, the capital and chief city of the Ziguinchor Region and Casamance area of Senegal. Here last minute travelers can arrange a quick Guinea-Bissau visa at the embassy here.
It takes only 10-15 minutes! We walked right in, chose the 30 day visa, and the manager inside simply stamped in our stickers in our passport
We then stopped for lunch for an hour at atmospheric Le Kassa Restaurant before leaving Zinguinchor.
It’s then another 25 minute drive to the final and southernmost border town in Senegal, Mpak, before reaching our 3rd and final country of Guinea-Bissau. Stamp out of Senegal here.
Then with our fresh Guinea-Bissau visas, we then crossed over and arrived in the border town of Sao Domingos to stamp into Guinea-Bissau.
Just to sum it up, it’s 5 steps:
1) Stamp out of The Gambia
2) Stamp into Senegal
3) Pay for and obtain the Guinea-Bissau visa sticker at the embassy in Zinguinchor, Senegal
4) Stamp out of Senegal
5) Stamp into Guinea-Bissau
…and don’t mind the countless livestock and random wrecked American cars everywhere.
And if that wasn’t enough for a single day, we drove 4 more hours south through Guinea-Bissau on unpaved dirt roads and stopping for far too many checkpoints before finally reaching our intended destination of Bissau, the capital city of Guinea-Bissau.
After settling at our lodgings at the very cozy Casa Cacheu, we noticed how its owner Nico has designed the most brilliant contraption for the condensation that comes from an A/C:
- At time of posting in Ziguinchor, it was 21 °C - Humidity: 95% | Wind Speed: 8km/hr | Cloud Cover: sunny