Niokolo-Koba, Senegal's major park, takes up a fair chunk of the south-eastern corner of the country. Although neglected in recent years, it's still very beautiful and worth a visit if you've got the time. Its lush and varied vegetation is home to over 80 species of mammal, including elephant, lion, leopard and eland, although you can't always count on seeing them. Elephant, particularly, have been drastically reduced by poaching. You are likely, however, to see hippo, crocodile, waterbuck, bushbuck, kob, baboon, buffalo, monkey (green and hussar), warthog, roan antelope and hartebeest.You must have a vehicle to enter the park, and walking is not allowed anywhere; travellers without a car can visit by public transport or on an organised tour. The best time to come is between December and May (the dry season), but some park tracks are not cleared until a month after the rains have ended, so don't take anything for granted. For information, visit the park headquarters in Tambacounda, where you might get lucky and catch a lift.

This large delta, formed where the seasonal Siné and Saloum rivers meet the tidal waters of the Atlantic, is often overlooked by visitors. You will not see large mammals here, apart from the occasional wart hog and perhaps a sea cow (manatee) in the lagoons, but the area abounds with monkeys and is particularly good for birding, especially during the November-to-April migratory season. A wild, beautiful region of mangrove swamps, lagoons, forests, dunes and sand islands, the delta is well worth a visit for the scenery alone. The ocean waters and a few points of delta land are protected as the Parc National du Delta du Saloum.The village of Djifere on the western edge of the delta sits within the park at the tip of a narrow spit of land called the Pointe de Sangomar. Palmarin is another village a few kilometres north of Djifere. Both are good places to base yourself and arrange pirogue (dugout canoe) trips around the delta wetlands. West of the eastern gateway to the region, Kaolack, Foundiougne (pronounced FOUN-dune) is easy to reach and is another good place to arrange pirogue trips, plus fishing and bird-watching ventures, which can also be arranged from Ndangane (pronounced n-den-GAN-nee), the northernmost settlement bordering the delta.The southern side of the park, known as the Forêt de Fathala, is a dry, open woodland with tidal mud flats on the western edge and mangrove swamps beyond. It's best explored from bases at Toubakouta and Missirah. Red colobus monkeys are plentiful here but shy.

Tiny Gorée Island, about 3km (2mi) east of Dakar, is a wonderfully peaceful place with about 1000 inhabitants, no asphalt roads and no cars. You'll find colonial-style houses with wrought-iron balconies, an old town hall, decent beaches and Le Castel, a rocky plateau that offers good views of the island and Dakar and is now occupied by a bunch of ganjafied drum junkies.At the north end of the island, the excellent IFAN Historical Museum is worth a wander. Its superb pictorial and physical exhibits portray Senegalese history up to the present. There's also the Musée Maritime, Musée de la Femme and a tourist market near the ferry ramp that's full of souvenir crafts.But the highlight - or lowlight, depending on your degree of sensitivity - of a visit to Gorée is a trip to the Maison des Esclaves (Slave House), built in 1786 and renovated in 1990 with French assistance. Here, according to the house's tour guides, slaves were stuffed into small pens, inspected and priced like animals before being shipped to the Americas. The curators will go on to tell you how the obstinate ones were chained to the walls and sea water was pumped into their rooms to keep them partially submerged, and how the weaker ones died and were fed to sharks while the stronger survivors were branded with the shipping company's insignia and packed tightly into ships' holds for transportation. Although walking through the dimly lit dungeons (particularly after a visit to the museum) is truly evocative of the horrors of the slave trade, historians now believe it unlikely that the Slave House actually held many captive slaves, apart from those who belonged to the house's owners and maybe a few for trading. While they're anxious to distance themselves from charges of revisionism, they see the promotion of the house as a historical site of significance as mere commercialism based on distortion. Regardless of the promoters' hype and despite the historians' doubts, Slave House and its stories make for a grim reminder of Senegal's involvement in the brutal trade.