Ngor Island is located off the coast of Ngor District in north Dakar. It can make an ideal destination to escape the noise and hustle of Dakar for a day or more.
There is a boat going back and forth to the island every some brief interval, leaving from Ngor Beach. As soon as you approach the beach, you will be greeted by a multitude of locals eager to lead you to the boat. You may safely follow any one of them, as long as they don’t ask you for more than 500 CFA both ways, which is the normal price. You will be given a life-vest, you hop on the boat, and off you set, to be dropped off, after a couple of minutes, at either of the two adjoining beaches by the south coast of the island.
The first thing that impressed me as soon as I set foot on the island was the degree of cleanness at the beaches. Far unlike the ones in mainland Dakar, these people have managed to maintain their beaches astonishingly clean and tidy for African standards.
All along the two beaches’ length, there are successive elementary café-restaurants, where one can spend relaxing hours lying in the sunbeds, and tasting the just-plucked-out-of-the-sea fish for very reasonable prices.
The whole island is just over 500 m from to side, thus making it possible to walk it around, not once, but multiple times, till you get bored. Ambling along the narrow lanes of the village, you may wonder at its characterized by various architectural styles cute houses and the delicate murals upon their walls, surrounded by palm trees, casuarinas, terminalias and other peculiar tropical vegetation. Apart from the beaches at the island’s south coast, the rest of its periphery is occupied by a rocky shore, against which the waves of the encompassing Atlantic Ocean are constantly splashing noisomely.
Its people are kind and easy-going, never neglecting to bid you a bonjour. You will see women in pied colorful dresses walking slowly through the lanes, dexterously balancing baskets filled with fruit and various goods upon their heads. Old and young men sitting patiently with their fishing lines thrown into the waves by the ledge of some rock or another. Other men occupied with some building or transporting work, or just sitting idly and discussing in the relieving shade of some tree. Children playing and running around merrily all over the place. And others lurking to sell you some of their elaborate hand-made artefacts or offer you their guiding services, always discreetly, however, never becoming a nuisance.
Thumbs up to the beautiful people of ÃŽle de Ngor and their little paradise!
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