Wassu stands beside the Gambia River in a country that is a narrow strip of land on either bank of the water, and the stone circles that give it fame belong to a landscape that most people never think about. The circles are rings of laterite pillars, some standing taller than a person, set in a grassy clearing and placed with a precision that suggests careful planning. Archaeologists believe they were burial monuments, raised over about a thousand years from the first millennium BC or soon after, by a society that has left no written records. In 2006, UNESCO listed the circles of Wassu, with those of Kerbatch, Sine Ngayène and Wanar in Senegal, as the Senegambian Stone Circles.
Each pillar was cut from laterite, the red crusted soil that covers much of West Africa, and carved or dressed to a roughly cylindrical shape. A few circles have a larger stone standing in the middle or a slab set at an angle, and some have been dug to show burials. At Wassu, a small museum on the site shows the finds. The stones are still red and rough, and in the low light of morning and evening they glow a deep brick colour against the green of the bush.
The ride along the river is slow, hot and flat, past villages of mud brick and tin roofs, fields of groundnuts and millet, baobabs and mango trees. The roads are mostly paved but have patches of broken surface, goats and donkeys, and shared taxis that stop without warning. The heat is intense, with temperatures above forty degrees before the rains, and the harmattan wind brings fine dust between November and February. Rains from June to October turn some tracks to mud. The river is crossed in places by ferry, so allow time and have cash for the fare.
Wassu is a small town, and fuel can be limited, so fill the tank at a larger town before heading up the river, and carry water. Simple meals of rice with fish or chicken, onion sauce and peanut stew are easy to find in the villages.
Aim for the cooler dry months from November to February, and visit early, before the sun is high.