The first thing that hits you when you arrive in Casamance is how green it is. Dakar, and most of Senegal, are located in a transition area between tropical vegetation and the Sahara desert called the Sahel. The Casamance is at the northern edge of the tropical zone.

We calculated the cost of travel, and realized that it would not cost us much more to fly into the Casamance. We did so, and the 50 minute flight was much shorter — and infinitely more comfortable — than the 12-15 hour ride in the back of a dusty, hot sept-place would have been!

As we came in for a landing, all we saw was water and vegetation and water with very few settlements. We had arrived in the Casamance.

These women were harvesting rice, the major crop here. They waved at us as we drove away.

We went to a park that had a large number of crocodiles. We discovered that crocodiles are not exciting animals. The ones we saw sat motionless, occasionally opening or closing their mouths. We threw an orange at one to see what would happen (the manager said we could throw rocks at the crocs if we wanted, after we told her that they didn’t look real) but absolutely nothing happened. And yes, they were in an enclosure.

Huge ant mounds are everywhere. This was as close as I got.

The pictures at the wood processing plant were taken under a fromagé tree (also known as a Ceiba tree — I should know, as I used to live in La Ceiba, Honduras, where the same trees occurred). They are huge, live to be several hundred years old, and seem very graceful.

After Ziguinchor, we made our way to Elinkine to catch a pirogue (canoe) over to Ile de Carabane. Pirogues leave from Elinkine to little towns scattered throughout the mangroves of the Casamance. It is also a large fishing center. Here is another fromagé tree.