Bandia National Park is a great and easily accessible destination from Dakar for a day trip. It’s a 3500 hectares of fenced but natural habitat for number of african animals. It’s an amazing experience which gives you a chance to get close to most of the African mammals and reptiles (excluding predators) and watch beautiful bird spieces.
Can you believe that all birds spieces have moved to Bandia National Park naturally. Bandia is a conservation park, which takes a good care of the animals and their reproduction, helps to protect some African wildlife like rhinos, a very rare species of antelopes, giraffes and impalas – medium-sized antelope. Most of the animals from the national park come from Senegal, some were brought from South Africa.
Entry fees and how to get there?
The easiest way to get to Bandia National Park is to hire a taxi from Dakar (around 40 Euro), which will take you there and wait for you until you finish your safari. You don’t have to pay in advance. The Park is located 75 km from Dakar. The best time to visit Bandia National Park is early in the morning or late afternoon when the animals become more active and don’t hide from an extreme heat in savanna forest.
Entry fee:
- Adults: 12 000 F/€20
- Children until 12 years old: 7 000 F
- Safari 4WD jeep rental with up to 11 seats: 40 000 F/you can wait for more tourists to share the jeep, although we visited the park in low season and enjoyed exploring the area only the two of us.
- Tour Guide: 6 500 F/you have to hire a guide along with a jeep.
All tourists entering the park are always accompanied by one of the local professional tour guides. They were surprisingly experienced and had a great knowledge of the park’s history and reserve’s trails
Bandia National Park
Red soil and sand spreading across the park is a very typical picture of African savanna. Serere people – it’s a local tribe who used to inhabit Bandia Park area. Nowdays Serere people live mostly in western Senegal and Gambia and speak Serer language. You will hear the whole story while in a park and visit one of the baobabs that was used as a ceremonial and cemetery site (bones are still remaining under the tree) by Serere people. Serer believe the baobab to become a tomb it cannot be inhabitet by any spirits.
Restaurants
There are few nice restaurants near the entrance of the park, with plenty of crocodiles in surrounding waters. There are also few shops with local souvenirs. Please remember that only us can support the wildlife and help speices to survive. We can easily contribute to avoid treating animals or humans in a wrong way, so would be great to remember:
- Never buy souvenirs made of animal parts
- We all live in Instagram times but please avoid photos with wild animals (especialy lions, crocodiles), as they are being heavily drugged and abused not to be ggresive toward tourists
- Avoid places and activities if the ethics is doubtful
- Avoid zoos, circuses, paid photos
- Don’t ever feed the animals – it is also a danger for yourself!
