They say you can never go back, but that’s only true in part, and doesn’t apply to travel at all. Visit a place a second time, and you go with a seasoned pair of eyes, and all the buoyancy and confidence of familiarity. My second time in Saint-Louis, Senegal, I was better at fending off the touts, better at finding the best grub, better at dealing with the heat. I picked a better hotel—the La Résidence, with its antique whiff of cigar smoke, its old-world comforts, and its rooftop views of the city. And this time, I would go further—I’d be spending a week gliding up the Senegal River, 125 miles from Saint-Louis to the trading town of Podor, on a river cruiser, the Bou el Mogdad.
Saint-Louis is famous for its French Colonial style architecture—with its symmetry, high ceilings, and balconies—but the pastel hues of those buildings are as faded as their grandeur. Against it all, the Bou, freshly painted white as a sun-bleached bone, looks positively brand new. Yet the story of the Bou is also one of return; she is the prodigal daughter of Saint-Louis.
Built in a Dutch shipyard in 1950, the ship spent twenty years on the Senegal River, carrying people, mail, and goods back and forth from Saint-Louis to the port-city of Kayes in Mali. When the expanding road network put an end to that in the 1970s, the Bou left for greener waters, hauling goods and passengers first on Senegal’s Sine Saloum delta, then on the Casamance River, Guinea-Bissau, and Sierra Leone. Local entrepreneurship brought her back in 2005, refurbished her with 25 comfortable cabins, a plunge pool, a restaurant, a rooftop bar, and a library—turning it into the country’s unrivaled luxury vessel, maintaining a vintage glow.
After a preliminary night onboard—cocktails, dinner, and a welcome concert by a local band, we set out in the early morning, pushing against the drift of the caramel-brown river. Senegal was to starboard, Mauritania to port. The land was so flat that after four hours, the twin spires of the Grand Mosque of Saint-Louis were still visible.
We weren’t traveling fast—at three knots, we were going at little more than a brisk walking pace, a speed conditioned for simplicity. And it was that simplicity that made this return to Senegal so sweet. Gone was the bustle of Dakar, the crowds, noise, and smells of the city. There was only the soft thumping of the engine, and nowhere to be. I could spend hours reading my book and looking out over the countryside in quiet serenity.
