Residence Les Calanques, Dakar

Plage Virage.

I did stay about a week at the Calanques Apartments, Dakar, in November 2017. The assistant manager, Mame, was kind enough to pick me up from the airport nearby (this was the old airport which closed three weeks later) at about 2.30am with a sign with my name on it. The cab was battered and the lights in the car park flickered erratically; he informed me there was a general power cut, and indeed in the apartment there was no power at all except for the torch function on my mobile phone, though with no way to recharge it or use the aircon or modem. I was wondering if this was closer to the Congo than I had expected. Nevertheless I unwound the mosquito net and collapsed onto the bed. The pickup and the early check-in were charged the next day at 40k CFA and they provided a local Sim card and credits for 5k CFA. After some further hours of flashing the power was restored and worked fine with modem and aircon for the rest of the stay. I had been upgraded to a large 'studio' on the ground floor of a modern block with a separate large, well equipped kitchen lacking only a table and including a fridge which worked (if plugged into one of the outlets which worked). A decent supermarket was 5 minutes walk. There was no sound from the airport but some banging during the day from construction a few buildings away. The place was ten minutes walk from the beach at Plage Virage, with half a dozen restaurants, two beach bars and reasonably pleasant hawkers. A taxi to Almadies, which has some more restaurants and beach bars, was 1000CFA (£1.35) though one could just walk, or jump on a bus for 120CFA. A taxi to the Beaux Marrachiers bus depot was 3000CFA and to the center of town supposed to be 2000CFA though one could wander up the road to the airport and take the no. 8 bus from there for 200CFA (but this is extremely tiring, takes hours and I would not recommend it). This was quite a nice though not particularly cheap apartment, though I would have preferred some fans rather than the aircon, but I am not sure how many people will stay in this area with the new airport closer to the resort at Saly.