If you follow me on Instagram or saw my recent greeting, you know that I’ve just been to Senegal. This was mostly an Eat. Read. Sunbathe. type of a holiday, but we did get out of the hotel territory for a bit, to have at least some sense of what the country looks and feels like outside the – very beautiful and smoothly run – resort.

Now, I’m perfectly aware that one day of carefully curated tourism with a guide does not an expert on West Africa make. That said, we had an intense day visiting the markets, a local village, Saloum river delta and several other places. I wanted to share some of it, but my Instagram feed with the skincare pictures and fancy cocktails did not seem like the right place. So I’m sharing a selection here, in case you want to take a peek.

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The Men Who Hang With Goats: the market where cattle and other animals are sold is exclusively male. Nobody minded me being there, so I assume they see tourists regularly, although we were the only non-locals on that day.

Food and everything else is sold at a separate market close by where the segregation is less severe, but it’s overwhelmingly female. Things are often bought in bulk and taken to the villages.

Serers are one of the many ethnic groups of Senegal, making up around 15% of the population. The village we visited was very traditional, but not everything was unfamiliar – next to thatched roofs and sheep, there were boys in Messi t-shirts. And teenage girls wearing fooball gear, too!

Saloum river delta is a UNESCO world heritage site. We only saw a small bit of the 180 000 hectars of channels, islands, mangrove forests (with oysters clinging to the plants) and bird life, but enough to have an idea of the rest.

On the way to the coast, we thought we saw a thick fog rising. That turned out to be smoke from tens (probably hundreds) of ovens for smoking fish – right there in the half-desert, in the open. The photos I took from the mini van unfortunately don’t give you an adequate idea of the scale of this, nor the sense of apocalypse.

All along the Senegalese coast, the boats are bringing in fish and other sea creatures. The sea is filled with the long, lean and colourful pirogs that look too elegant and vulnerable for the ocean. On the shore, huge mollusks are laying in heaps, buckets are filled with calamari and octopus, fish are glinting in the sun – ready to be sold and transported.

All the pictures are taken with my iPhone, that’s why the quality is what it is – esecially when I’ve zoomed. I hope they give you some flavour of the place despite that.