Before the French and the British came to this stretch of the Gambia, the Portuguese were here, and the ruins of San Domingo are what is left of their presence. Portuguese traders and settlers moved up the river in the sixteenth century, married into local families and built a small community with a chapel, a handful of houses and storehouses on the north bank near Juffureh. They traded cloth, iron and beads for wax, hides, ivory and slaves, and their descendants, often of mixed ancestry, became middlemen for later European traders. What survives is a fragment of wall, the outline of a chapel or church and some brick foundations in a patch of ground under baobab and mango trees.
It is a small and modest site, which is exactly why it is moving. Nothing about the ruin shouts, and its brick walls are being reclaimed by roots and termites, but it marks the beginning of a story that ran for three centuries. The broader ensemble listed by UNESCO includes the island, the fort remains and the villages of Albreda and Juffureh, and this ruin gives the earliest layer. The word Albreda itself is a form of the Portuguese for a small settlement, and the language left many traces in local place names and family names.
Juffureh, a short walk away, is the village linked in Alex Haley's Roots to the ancestor Kunta Kinteh, and it has a small museum and a market where women sell batik cloth and carved wooden masks. Villagers will often invite you to see the family compounds, and the pace of life here is slow, with chickens underfoot and the sound of pounding millet. Visits are best made in the cool of the morning.
The ride follows the north bank road from the Barra ferry through open farmland, with tarmac that comes and goes and the usual hazards of animals and pedestrians. Roadblocks and police checks are common and are usually polite, and it helps to carry your papers within reach. Fuel is available at Barra and Essau, and the nearest bigger town on the map is Lamin, about six kilometres away, but supplies in small villages are unreliable, so fill up and carry water. The dry season from November to April is the comfortable time.