Home » Seasonal rentals in Senegal » Eco-Lodges » Eco-Lodges for Rent in Cap Skirring

Cap Skirring is Senegal's beach resort: a beach that runs for kilometers in the far southwest of the country, coconut palms, warm water, and a climate that stays mild when the rest of West Africa is baking. You will find every level of accommodation here — and among them, a format that Casamance largely invented: the campement (eco-lodge).

A campement is not a campsite. It is a small place to stay, often a handful of huts in a garden, run by a family or by the village, with a shared table and a host who calls you by your first name by the second day. This page lists the campements in and immediately around Cap Skirring.

We are a Senegalese company and we put you in direct contact with the properties. The resident rate is shown on each listing.

Cap Skirring & the Casamance campement tradition

It is worth knowing where this format comes from, because it is far from trivial. In the 1970s, as international tourism was setting up on the Casamance coast in the form of large beach complexes, several villages in Lower Casamance built their own places to stay — made from local materials, run collectively, with the income shared with the community. This village tourism experiment, one of the first of its kind in West Africa, left a lasting mark on the region. Even today, the Casamance campement bears that imprint: small scale, local materials, family or village management, and part of what you pay staying on site.

The architecture follows suit. The huts are low, made of banco (mud brick) or rendered concrete, with thatch or corrugated-iron roofs, set out in a garden rather than lined up in a building. You sleep with the window open and the mosquito net down, you eat outdoors under a mango or kapok tree, and the comfort is real but limited: a fan rather than air conditioning in many places, electricity that may keep set hours, patchy phone signal. It is not a watered-down hotel; it is a different deal.

Geography completes the picture. Cap Skirring is a former fishing port turned beach resort, about seventy kilometers from Ziguinchor, and the beach stretches north to Boucotte and Diembéring and south to Kabrousse and the Guinea-Bissau border. Campements are often located on the outskirts of the center, on these quieter stretches — which means a beach to yourself, but also a car, a bike or a motorbike taxi to go out for dinner. It is a trade-off to make with your eyes open.

Finally, Casamance is not a neutral beach backdrop: it is Jola country. Flooded rice paddies, kapok forests, sacred groves, impluvium houses, ceremonies whose calendar is not yours to set. A well-run campement is also the gateway to all of this, because the person welcoming you is from here.

What a campement in Cap Skirring covers

• Beachfront campement — a few huts a few dozen meters from the sand, with a straw-roofed shelter for meals. The most sought-after format, and the first to fill up in high season.
• Campement set back in a garden — quieter, under the mango trees and coconut palms, five or ten minutes' walk from the beach. Often more affordable and cooler.
• Village campement — run by the community or by a village family, with part of the income going back to the community. Full immersion, and simplicity by design.
• Campement with meals — eating on site is the rule rather than the exception: catch of the day, rice, oysters in season. Many work on a half-board or full-board basis.
• Family hut — several beds in one unit, for families and groups of friends.

If you want guaranteed air conditioning, round-the-clock service and a larger property, look at the hotels in Cap Skirring — there are some on this beach too and they fill that role very well. The campement offers a human scale and a connection to the place.

Things to do

• The beach, first of all — kilometers of sand, coconut palms, and very few people as soon as you move away from the center.
• Surfing — long, consistent beach breaks, in an atmosphere worlds away from the spots on the Dakar peninsula.
• The bolongs — the Casamance's mangrove channels can be explored by pirogue (dugout canoe), between mangroves, rice paddies and villages reachable only by water.
• Jola villages — Diembéring, Kabrousse, Oussouye and the impluvium houses, best visited with a guide: many sites are sacred and must not be photographed.
• Hiking — Lower Casamance is good walking country in the dry season, between rice paddies and forest.

When to go

The main season runs from October to June. This is the dry season, when the seasonal flights operate, the campements are open and the climate is the best in the country: hot and dry, with comfortable nights.

From July to September, the rainy season (hivernage) shows Casamance at its most spectacular — flooded rice paddies, impenetrable greenery, huge skies — with harder dirt roads and plenty of mosquitoes. One common misconception is worth clearing up here: the resort does not close. Two to four large complexes suspend their season, but the campements and independent properties stay open, with much gentler rates. The really busy periods are the Christmas and New Year holidays and the French school vacations: Casamance is a destination with a pronounced high season, and the best campements are booked months in advance.

Good to know & booking

There are three ways to get there from Dakar: by road, a long trip crossing The Gambia; by ferry to Ziguinchor, then by road; or by plane in season, as Cap Skirring airport receives direct flights during the tourist season. Check the status of these connections when you book — they vary from year to year.

Once there, bring cash: many campements do not take cards, and ATMs are rare outside the center. Pack insect repellent and a flashlight, and accept that you will not always have a signal. That is part of why people come.

Between the campement and the lodge, the guesthouses in Cap Skirring offer a few rooms, meals and hosts who live here year-round.

You secure your stay by paying 20% online, then pay the balance to the campement on arrival. It is a real advantage for a faraway destination like Casamance: your budget stays available until you leave, and you only pay in full once you have seen the hut. Bring cash — many campements do not take cards and ATMs are concentrated in the center of Cap Skirring.

The cancellation deadlines take the season into account: free up to 7 days before arrival from June 1 to October 31, 14 days from November 1 to May 31 — that is, throughout the season when Casamance is visited. Note this deadline when you book, especially if your seasonal flight is not yet confirmed. The resident rate is shown on each listing for people living in Senegal, including the Senegalese diaspora, on an account verified after a phone call. Finally, budget for the tourist tax, 1,000 FCFA per person per night. It is paid directly to the property, which collects it — we do not — and the amount is given as a guide. If the campement cancels, which happens mostly at the very start or very end of the season, we move you to an equivalent property in the area or refund you in full.

Who is it for?

Travelers who want the beach without the resort: that is the very definition of the Casamance campement. Moderate budgets, for whom full board in a hut remains the most straightforward option in the country. Surfers, who find space and waves here, far from the Dakar crowds. Families, because a hut in a garden with the sea at the end of it is a childhood in itself. Travelers curious about Jola culture, who leave with more than beach photos. And the Senegalese diaspora and residents heading back down south who would rather stay with people than in an institution.

An honest caveat: choose a campement knowing what you are signing up for. A fan rather than air conditioning in many places, possible power cuts, unreliable signal, and a beach that is often superb but has real currents — swim where the locals swim. Those who arrive expecting hotel standards leave disappointed; the others come back.

What strikes you in Cap Skirring is the ratio between space and people. You walk along the beach in the late afternoon, pass three fishermen and a dog, the line of coconut palms goes on and on, and it takes you a moment to realize this is normal. This beach is immense, and it has never been full.

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