Dakar · SN

Westernmost Point of Mainland Africa

Standing at the Westernmost Point of Mainland Africa — the rocky headland known as Pointe des Almadies, jutting into the Atlantic at the north-west tip of Dakar's Cap Vert peninsula — is the rare thrill of touching the edge of a continent. At 17.5° west of Greenwich, this is the farthest-west point of Africa and of the entire Afro-Eurasian landmass, sitting about eight degrees further west than Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point of mainland Europe. It is a small, windswept, volcanic cape rather than a polished monument park: a ship-shaped viewing platform, a signpost noting distances to far-off cities, and beyond them the breakers washing over the Chaussée des Almadies reef and a slender lighthouse. Locals and travellers mostly come for one thing — the sunset, when the sun sinks straight into the open Atlantic — and to feel the pull of a place where, from these coordinates, the next landfall to the west is the Caribbean, some 5,000-odd kilometres away.