I’m kind of a Scrooge about Christmas. Even before we started this adventure, when we were working, the end of December was one time we could get away (far away) and our business wouldn’t suffer. So except for stopping by San Diego last December, we don’t really do Christmas.

Part of the issue is that we just got really tired of weeks and weeks of Christmas advertisements Christmas sales and Christmas decorations and Christmas songs. So for us, Christmas in a Moslem country like Senegal has been just about perfect. We end up hearing Christmas songs for maybe three days in our hotel and restaurants, and the Christmas decorations are decidedly understated. And since we don’t buy things, no presents, either. Instead it’s quiet beach time, some good food, and getting ready for New Year’s.

One of the things we don’t usually like about Christmas while we’re traveling is that the hotels often have a mandatory, expensive, and low-quality Christmas Eve dinner obligation aimed more at families with small kids than, well, us. This year was an exception, though: our hotel in Mbour still required to buy dinner at the hotel, but it was a civilized affair, six courses, good food, and starting at 8:30 PM. Live music from a local band. Then Christmas day we drove up to a Radisson Blu hotel in Dakar and had an amazing Christmas dinner at a great Lebanese restaurant. Soft Christmas music playing, nice drinks, and then it’s over. A brief, pleasant Christmas, like they were celebrated decades ago before it became a multi-month extravaganza.

Except for the tropical beach thing; I suppose that wasn’t so typical for most people… So now it’s an overnight flight to DC (getting on a plane at 2:30 AM is bizarre, but that’s the service Africa gets) and then up to Boston for a wedding.

For essentially our last stop in Senegal we headed back north to Mbour, about 50 miles south of Dakar and the main city on Senegal’s “Petite Coast.” We thought we were going to a beach resort but discovered on arriving that we were about a mile from the beach. Nice grounds and a couple of nice swimming pools, but a mile from the beach. So our lazy days were mostly getting up, walking down to the beach, having a great lunch at a beachside restaurant we loved, and going back to the resort in the evening. Then out to dinner where we continue to be impressed by the food of Senegal.

The beach is really the reason to come here; broad, wide, sandy, and often pretty much empty. Because one of us is relatively pale and needs protection from the sun, if we’re not staying at a place on the beach we need to find a place that will let us rent chairs and an umbrella or – as is typically the case in poorer countries – will let us have the chairs and umbrella if we have lunch there. So we have to find a place not just with those beach amenities but that also has good food.

We found that in spades in Mbour. (To be specific, the beach area is called Saly, but the city is Mbour, so we’re sticking with that.) Cristal is a restaurant owned by a sweet French couple that appears to be associated with a residential development on the beach for mostly French ex-pats. The tables are all out in the sand with nice table cloths and linen napkins and wine glasses and all that, a surprisingly elegant spot on the beach. The food is great – I’m becoming a huge fan of French colonialism – the service is surprisingly good, it’s not expensive, and during the whole time you’re sitting on a beautiful beach. At one point the proprietress came over and explained to us (in French, since no one here except us speaks English) that if we order our food from the beach chairs we wouldn’t have to wait for it at the table. We explain we were delighted to sit there under the awnings sipping Perrier and then wine. It was a pretty good deal.

And then there were other great restaurants for dinner. One night we were walking in an unexplored part of the town, looking for a specific restaurant that TripAdvisor said was right there. It wasn’t. There wasn’t anything remotely like a restaurant around there. As we were leaving the area, unsure what to do for dinner now, we noticed a gate with a sign in French that seemed to indicate a restaurant, and a doorbell. We rang the doorbell and were ushered into this little French compound with a half-dozen people crowded around a small bar and tables spread around under the trees. It wasn’t the restaurant we were looking for but it was great, and great fun chatting with the owners.

Things like that just happen to you in Senegal sometimes.

Knowing that it would be impolite to just go to the beach everyday – you’re supposed to do something cultural when traveling to new places – one morning we rented 4×4 dirt buggies and a guide to take us on a tour of rural Mbour. Neither of us particularly like motorized things and we were skeptical, but there was just really nothing else that was even remotely appealing, so we figured we’d give it a try. Get out into the countryside, see some village life, that sort of thing.

Turned out it was kind of fun. You can get out of the city in a place like that pretty quickly and there we were, out surrounded by baobab trees and miles and miles of dry, dusty plains. It actually was interesting and fun, though it might be another 60 years before I need to rent one of those things again.

Except for consistently good food and deep poverty, the thing that will stick with me about Senegal in general and Mbour in particular is just the sand. And goats. Everywhere, constantly. Unpaved roads aren’t dirt roads, they’re sand roads, and there are goats wandering around on them. You go for a walk and you’re just caked in sand and watching the goats rummage around for something to eat. Goats and sand. I’ve been intrigued watching the locals get their exercise on the beach: running in the sand (not on the hard-packed beach, but in the sand), doing pushups and sit-ups in the sand, doing squats and all sorts of exercise in the sand. And then it’s just always in your teeth and on your arms and in your eyes. Sand. Goats. That’s Senegal.

And one more cool memory from Mbour. While there, we received a comment on one of our Cambodia blogs from over two years ago. Someone wrote to ask if they could use the picture at the top of this post for the cover of a book. How cool is that? We answered sure, as long as they tell us when the book is published so we can see it. Mark will soon be a published photographer!

From here we make a very quick day-and-a-half stop in Dakar before catching a red-eye flight to DC and then into Boston for a friend’s wedding, so we’re pretty much through with Africa for a while. We wanted this six-week stretch in Morocco, Senegal, and The Gambia to see if we liked Africa. The answer is yes. It’s certainly not always easy and it has its challenges, but after weeks in Europe this is the kind of challenge we get eager for. Now, when we get to the parts of Africa that the British colonized and the food isn’t so good, then we may not be so excited. This, though, has been a great introduction to Africa.

After a week in urban Senegal we headed to the beach on the far southern edge of the country. As I noted earlier the commute was pretty hellish, but I can now report that it was totally worth it. We had a great week at a truly beautiful resort.

We stayed at at place called Les Alizes. It’s well regarded on TripAdvisor, but that’s based on pretty limited reviews; only three in English so far in 2015. So it’s hard to have a good sense of what you’re going to get. Here’s what we did get. A small house all to ourselves; three bedrooms plus a loft, living room, kitchen, patio, and sun deck. Beautiful grounds just packed with flowers and vines and color. Some of the best food we’ve ever had at any resort anywhere in the world. A nice pool with comfortable loungers and a view to die for. A huge beach that went on for miles, also with great beach chairs.

And … we had it almost entirely to ourselves. There was one other couple there most of the nights we were there, but our last day we had the whole place to ourselves. Amusingly we were talking with one of the managers on our last night, who asked if we thought it was too quiet. I almost wanted to ask what that meant, but we said no, we were very happy with it. He said the couple that left the day before complained, saying it was too quiet. They weren’t at all a young couple, probably just about my age. I found that weird, because I was thrilled to not have to share the pool or beach with others.

Of course, it’s also a little sad that the place was so empty. They’ll be packed over the Holidays, but their business has fallen off as the fear of terrorism has grown. Really tragic because the resort is beautiful and the staff was wonderful. You feel genuinely bad for them if they’re livelihood is being eroded because of a few bat-shit crazy terrorists. Especially when Senegal has felt so damned safe in each of our three stops.

Meanwhile, back to the highlights. We spent most days lazing on the beach, reading and walking. I’ve tackled a massive Pulitzer Prize winning, 1,250-page history of New York City so I need all the beach time I can get; it will be weeks before I finish it. The walking part was good, too. There were, seriously, measurably more cattle on the beach than people. While there was really not much – just about nothing – outside the resort, you could walk a mile-and-a-half north to a Club Med (where the other couple looking for excitement obviously should have gone) or two miles south to … Guinea-Bissau. Yup, you just walk walk down the beach and find yourself in a new country. Seemed strange. Along with North Korea and Bosnia-Herzogovina, this is now the third country we’ve touched on this adventure that we don’t count as a country we’ve visited. You have to do more than just walk across a border or have a cup of coffee to say you’ve been there.

Amusingly, the second time I walked that way a big old dead dolphin had washed ashore. There were lots of big ugly birds starting to pick it apart so I just kept walking. The next day the birds were still there but most of the dolphin wasn’t anymore. Officially I appreciate the beauty of nature, but in this case yuck.

The best part of the whole week, though, was the food. Now, I love a good beach, and this was most definitely a good beach. The food, though, was simply amazing. We ate every meal for six days there and every dish for lunch and dinner would blow you away. I’ve never found anything like it, where every meal was such a treat and at not unreasonable prices. I’ve noted before that French colonialists left at least something of value behind and this was a great case. The chef was Senegalese but he’d obviously picked up more than a few tricks from the remnants of the French.

Cap Skirring: beaches, beautiful grounds, cows, and some of the best food we’ve ever had at a resort. A pretty good package! From here we’ve hired a driver to take us north to The Gambia where we’re spending another week at the beach. It’ll be difficult to meet the standards of Cap Skirring.