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!
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We spent our last couple days in the Casamance on the Ile de Carabane. Looking at these pictures, you can pretty much gather what our experience was like. Quiet and relaxing. There is not a lot to do there, which was just fine with us. We wandererd around the island (it’s located in the Casamance River a few miles before it reaches the Atlantic Ocean), made a sand castle on the beach, made conversation, ate good food.
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Sorry for the long gap since my last posting, but Abraham and I have been on the road and have just returned to Dakar. This time we went to Ziguinchor in the southern region of Senegal known as Casamance, where Abraham had several meetings. While there, we decided to take a few days and visit Guinea Bissau, just 15 miles away. A short paragraph in our Lonely Planet guidebook mentioned a small town called Varela as having a spectacular coastline, so we decided to check it out.
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