Cap Centre

The centre of Cap Skirring is not a town: it is a junction, a few hundred metres of shops, a covered market, two petrol stations and the road that runs down to the beach. Everyone passes through during the day — residents for shopping, hotel staff for transport, visitors for the cash machine and a SIM card.

The market is the place to know: Casamance rice, red palm oil, smoked fish, mangoes and papayas in season, mangrove oysters sold by the bucket by the women who gather them in the bolongs, and a fabric section where a garment can be sewn in two days. Next to it, the gargotes serve rice and fish or chicken yassa for one to two thousand francs, standing or on a bench.

In the evening a few bars open along the street, with music and table football; it is modest, local, and nothing like the nights of Saly. The main beach is a kilometre away, ten minutes on foot or three by taxi, and the airport three kilometres — the planes come in low over the village two or three times a week, which is still the event of the day for the children.

This is where to stay if you want to live at the Cap's rhythm rather than a hotel's: cheaper, connected to the village, provided you accept the power cuts and the laterite streets broken up after the rainy season.

For money and phones, plan generously: the two cash machines in the centre break down regularly, most camps and every pirogue man take cash only, and the mobile connection is fine for messages but rarely for a video call. The shops close early, around eight, except the bars. And keep in mind that the village lives by the season: from November to May everything is open, and from July to September the main street is down to one canteen, one shop and the petrol station.