Beaches & Sun in Sierra Leone

Bare feet sink into sand still warm at half past six in the evening. To your left, a fisherman drags a wooden canoe up the beach; to your right, the headland of Tokeh Point glows orange in the last of the sun. The Atlantic curls onto the shore in long calm sets. You are an hour south of Freetown and there are perhaps twenty people on the entire kilometre of white sand — most of them children kicking a football, their fathers smoking dried bonga over a driftwood fire.

The Freetown Peninsula is West Africa's quiet beach secret. Forty kilometres of empty Atlantic coastline run from Lumley in the city down to Kent at the southern tip — Lakka, Hamilton, Sussex, Number Two River, Tokeh, John Obey, Bureh, York, Tombo. White sand, palm trees, mangroves where the rivers meet the sea, and a forested mountain range rising straight up behind. The Western Area Peninsula National Park protects the inland slopes so the beaches remain backed by green and not by hotels. Offshore lie the Banana Islands and, further south, Tasso in the estuary and the Turtle Islands far down the Sherbro coast.

The dry season runs November to April — warm and sunny, water 27–28°C, gentle swells, every beach lodge and operator open. The wet season (May–October) brings dramatic afternoon storms and big surf at Bureh but most small peninsula lodges close from mid-June to early November. River Number Two charges a small entry fee for foreigners, a few of the privately owned beach resorts charge a day-pass for non-guests, but the long public stretches between them are free. Local currency cash is essential at the smaller bars and village stalls; the larger resorts accept US dollars and a few take cards.

The Freetown Peninsula — forty kilometres of Atlantic beach

The peninsula runs south from Aberdeen Bridge, paved highway down one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other. Lumley Beach is the in-town strip, four kilometres of city-front sand with hotels, bars, the Sunday-evening Family Kingdom amusement crowds, barbecued chicken stalls and rooftop bars. It is the place to start before driving south to the wilder beaches.

Lakka, Hamilton and Goderich come first — small fishing villages with a handful of family-run lodges and beachside restaurants. The Sierra Leone Maritime Museum sits at Goderich and a few of the country's best seafood shacks line the road. Sussex is next — a sheltered cove with the Italian-Sierra Leonean Florence's (Franco's) Resort and its kitchen of fresh lobster, crab and carpaccio.

River Number Two Beach, half an hour south of Aberdeen, is the country's most famous beach — a white-sand spit between the Atlantic Ocean and the lagoon of River No 2. The Sankofa Complex (Number Two River Development Association) is community-run by villagers who reinvest tourism revenue into local development. The Bounty bar commercial of the 1980s was filmed here. Bring small leones for the entry fee.

Tokeh sits a little further south — a long crescent of sand with the higher-end Tokeh Beach Resort and Sierra Leone's only 5-star property, The Place. Bureh Beach is twenty minutes beyond Tokeh, then Kent at the very tip of the peninsula where boats leave for Banana Islands. Each beach is twenty to forty minutes from the next by car, the road is paved most of the way to Kent, and the drive itself — the Atlantic on your right, the green peninsula mountains on your left — is one of the small pleasures of the country.

Surf country — Bureh and the Atlantic swells

Bureh Beach, an hour and a half south of Freetown between Tombo and Kent, is the unlikely home of Sierra Leone's only surf club. A river bends into the bay and creates a sandbar that produces a long, mellow, left-hand wave — one of the best waves in the country and an ideal place to learn.

The Bureh Beach Surf Club is a community-owned cooperative founded in 2012. About twenty local surfers run lessons, board rentals, simple guest rooms and a seafood restaurant on the sand. All revenue stays in the village, with 25 percent set aside for community projects (school fees, surf lessons for local children, small-business support). Several members have completed the ISA Level 1 surf-instructor certification.

Lessons are affordable for ninety minutes including board rental, and half-day board rentals are equally cheap. Beginners get the longest waves on the country — small, slow, soft — and the warm 27°C water makes wipe-outs less painful than anywhere in Europe. Bureh also has bodyboards, kayaks for paddling up the river into the mangroves, and the country's only female pro surfer KK, who learned here from the boys.

Bureh and the neighbouring Bafa break work best from May to November when the swells are biggest. December to April still produces clean small waves most days — ideal for first lessons. Heavier surf, more advanced waves and an empty line-up are all reasons Bureh is starting to appear on the African surfing circuit. Turtle Islands, far south on the Sherbro coast, holds the country's other surf spots — truly remote, accessible only by boat trip.

The islands — Banana, Tasso and the Turtle archipelago

Three offshore island groups round out Sierra Leone's beach geography, each with a very different character and accessed by a different boat ride.

Banana Islands lie just off the southern tip of the peninsula, reached by a short boat ride from Kent fishing village (a 90-minute drive from Freetown). Three small islands — Dublin (the main one), Ricketts and Mes-Meheux — covered in palm and breadfruit trees. Dublin has a freed-slave settlement from the 1820s, the ruined Slave Hole, the Old Fort, St Luke's Church (1820s), and Bafa Resort for lunch and swimming. The reef around Ricketts is the best snorkelling in the country — corals, parrotfish, the occasional turtle.

Tasso Island sits in the Sierra Leone River Estuary, fifty minutes by boat from Lungi Airport or twenty from Pepel. The Tasso Ecotourism Project — a community business run by the islanders — has five wooden chalets on the beach, a restaurant built around a Baobab tree, and a network of paths between the four villages of the island. RAMSAR-protected wetlands, Important Bird Area for migrant birds, and a rescue programme for the disappearing Timneh Grey Parrot.

The Turtle Islands — eight tiny islands off the southern Sherbro coast (Bakie, Bumpetuk, Chepo, Hoong, Mut, Nyangei, Sei, Yele) — are the wildest of the lot. Powder-white sand, clear blue water, almost no development, friendly Sherbro fishing villages and the country's most consistent surf for advanced riders. Access is by multi-day organised tour only; accommodation is in basic tented camps. The reward is one of the least-visited tropical archipelagos in Africa.

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