To be honest, my visit to The Gambia didn’t get off to the greatest start. I landed at 11 pm and my hotel didn’t pick me up like they were supposed to, and I had an uncomfortable taxi ride. One of the quirks of The Gambia is that sex tourism is fairly common there, but in an unusual twist, women are the primary consumers. Basically, what Thailand is for older men, The Gambia is for older European women, which means that there’s an extra dynamic in traveling there as a white woman. The locals tend to assume that’s why you’re there, which…. was very much not what I was looking for. My taxi driver kept offering opportunities for us to “party” together while I reiterated that I just wanted to go to my hotel to sleep.
That said, The Gambia is a very popular destination for British people to come for beach vacations, and I can see why. My hotel was really nice, and I had a swim-up room with an ocean view. I had a full day to kill before I was supposed to meet up with my tour group, so I paid a small fee to have my room for the full day and just vibed in the pool for the morning.
From there, I went to go meet our group! People were arriving at staggered times, but the six or seven of us who had arrived first met up and got a cab into downtown Banjul to explore. We started by climbing up to the top of the Banjul arch, which had a nice little exhibit on the history of The Gambia at the top.
It also had some pretty decent views of the city!
From there, we headed to the market. We wandered around for a bit and explored, which gave me a much better sense of Banjul than I’d gotten from the resort.
If you’ve never looked at The Gambia on a map, I’d recommend pulling it up now. It’s one of the more interestingly shaped ones. It’s basically entirely coastline – a tiny bit that borders the Atlantic Ocean, and then the majority of it is along the coast of the Gambia River. The only land border it has is with Senegal, because it essentially takes a chunk out of the middle of Senegal.
What this means is that it’s pretty much entirely wetlands, and therefore it is a very good place for birdwatching if that’s a thing you’re interested in. I am not a birdwatcher, but I am friends with one, and when I see cool birds, I try to get a good picture and send them to my friend Kellen to identify.
This little guy is a hooded vulture, and he is critically endangered! Kellen was absolutely floored that I was able to see one so close. Apparently, The Gambia, southern Senegal (the Casamance region), and Guinea-Bissau are the only place where their population is stable. Globally their population has decreased about 85% over the last 50 years. I saw several of them during this trip, and it was so sad to learn how rare they’ve become, but I’m glad that I had the chance to see them and learn about them through this trip.
Anyway, the next day was the official start of the tour! We had a briefing and then headed off to explore a bit more of the Gambia. We started with a fishing village. Fishing is a huge industry in West Africa and so we got a chance to see the markets and the beautiful painted boats several times as we made our way along the coast.
After a really pleasant lunch on the river, we headed south to the border with Senegal! This one was one of the easier land borders to cross, because most of us were not visa required to enter Senegal. But even an “easy” land border in West Africa can still be very time consuming, as we would learn over the coming days.
All in all, mixed reviews on The Gambia. The main tourist infrastructure, focused on beach resorts and partying, is really not my cup of tea, but when we got away from that and got to the areas like Banjul and the areas en route to the Senegalese border, I had a much more pleasant experience. It doesn’t really appeal to me enough to want to return, but I am happy that critically endangered vulture is thriving somewhere.