This emerging winter sun destination has beachfront rooms for £12 a night

Like most of West Africa, English-speaking Sierra Leone is a gaping hole on the holiday map – but a new tourism strategy could change that

Standing below a stump of splintered limbs, I looked up at a grey sky once filled with flourishing boughs. Torn down by a heavy storm in May 2023, Freetown’s historic 400-year-old Cotton Tree is now mostly a memory.
Only a year earlier, I’d been standing at the same spot watching a heated political rally. As Sierra Leone’s equivalent of Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park, the landmark is a popular meeting point, commemorating a defining moment which forever changed the story of Africa and continues to reshape the continent today.
According to legend, enslaved African Americans who had gained freedom by fighting for British forces in the American War of Independence prayed beneath the tree, after resettlement to their country of origin in 1792.
The former British colony was heralded by abolitionists as a beacon of peace and freedom, but decades of difficulty lay ahead. Spectres of a violent Civil War, blood diamond trade and past outbreaks of Ebola loom in many Westerners’ minds.
Like most of West Africa, the English-speaking country is a gaping hole on the holiday map. But major developments under a new tourism strategy aim to acquaint the world with “Sweet Salone”.
From December 2, flights launch from London Gatwick on recently formed flag carrier Air Sierra Leone. They are landing at a new $270 million solar-powered airport terminal so flashy I almost thought we’d diverted to another destination when I stepped off the plane.
While the direct airlift follows a lengthy hiatus, links between Sierra Leone and the UK have been in place for decades; our late Queen Elizabeth II even had local diamonds set in her Jubilee crown.
Across Freetown, the country’s portside capital, signs of colonial grandeur include the remains of Fourah Bay College, the first Western-style university in sub-Saharan Africa.
But there are remnants of a darker past, too. In Bunce Island, a 45-minute private speedboat ride from Freetown, iron cannons and crumbling watchtowers are the remains of a slave fort, a trading post where an estimated 30,000 Africans (the number may have been much higher) from across the continent were branded and sent to North America and the West Indies.
“A hot iron would brand the left-hand side of a slave’s chest, across the heart,” explained my guide, Osman Kamara.
Although reclaimed by nature, signs of pain and suffering lurked in the ruin’s shadows. Bats spiralled from a cave once used as a prison and the curving buttress roots of a kapok tree protectively embraced former cells. Beyond the “Door of no return”, a final point of exit, waters leading to the Atlantic Ocean were poignantly calm.
The fort has become a pilgrimage site for African Americans reconciling ancestral roots, and anyone able to trace their DNA to Sierra Leone can apply for citizenship through a programme launched in 2019. The biggest name to take up the offer is Hollywood actor Idris Elba, who is spearheading a project to build an “Afro-dynamic eco city” on Sherbro Island, further south.
The size of St Lucia, it’s one of more than 19 islands spread between Freetown’s bay and along the country’s 314-mile golden coastline, all potential destinations for winter-sun tourism. River Number Two, Tokeh and Bureh are some of the best beaches within easy reach from the capital.
But for now, there’s a refreshing absence of fly-and-flop resorts. Instead, wooden sailboats bring hauls of fish ashore, and children play football in the surf.
On Tasso Island, close to Bunce in the river estuary and reached by public ferry from Freetown, the British-founded Gladi-Gladi Trust supports a small not-for-profit community ecotourism project on Kissy Beach, where simple en-suite wooden cabins tucked between the mangroves cost around £12 per night.
After eating fried snapper and rice in the company of iridescent sunbirds, islander Ibrahim Kamara took me through the forest to a fishing village. Men sat on mudbrick porchways using razor blades to sew bits of flip flops onto fishing nets for use as floats. Sooty clouds billowed from a blackened smokehouse, where orderly rows of silver herrings glinted like silverware laid neatly in a drawer.
“This is our alligator hole,” he proudly informed me, pointing to a muddy ditch filled with a shallow pool of water. Minding their own business, man and man-eater have lived harmoniously for years.
With no modern sky-scraping monuments, glitzy hotels or bucket-list attractions, Sierra Leone’s greatest assets are culture and nature. Simple insights into daily living, unfolding unapologetically on Tarmac streets and sandy pathways, make the country irresistibly appealing.
At Kent, a former slave port on the mainland and a departure point for boat rides to the Banana Islands, I struggled to find anything attractive about the decaying ruins of a mission house filled with soiled clothes and rubbish. Yet amid the chaos, I had one of the most amusing encounters of my trip.
Hanging daringly from the top of a mango tree, a young boy plucked ripe balls of gold and tossed them into a sack below.
“Leave my mangoes alone,” screeched an old lady, refusing, even in her angriest moments, to budge from a stool set in the shade.
Falling into a rhythm with the metronomic thudding of fruits, her grumbles became an oddly hypnotic chant soundtracking the afternoon.
Days can be spent doing nothing and moving nowhere in Sierra Leone, a country forever grinding towards a halt. Splashing through waves on a wooden pirogue, I travelled to the Banana Islands, a backpacker haven with a rustic lodge and surprisingly trendy glamping pods.
Leaning against the buttress roots of a kapok tree, beneath a fuzz of white hair, village chief David Jones wearily detangled his nets as if extricating his own complex muddle of thoughts. “Times are difficult,” he sighed, against a ghostly backdrop of far-off mountain peaks. Yards away, below an archway above a path leading to the island, a faded sign read, “This is the centre of Africa”: a sobering reflection on days gone by.
Much of Sierra Leone’s modern misfortune stems from the Civil War, which tore the country apart from 1991 to 2002. Both economically and emotionally, recovery has been slow.
One surprising positive to emerge from the conflict was a brake on deforestation, a battle which has since resumed.
Leading a fight to protect the country’s wild spaces, Sri Lankan-born Bala Amarasekaran founded Freetown’s chimpanzee sanctuary Tacugama in 1995. Victims of an illegal bushmeat and pet trade, more than 100 compromised apes live in an enclosed forest area in hills above the city, where guests can stay nearby in self-catering cabins.
“To be honest, we’re almost at capacity,” Bala told me on a tour of the site, as we watched orphaned chimps swing playfully from ropes and rubber tyres. “That’s why we’re working with many national parks to protect wild chimps. Our animals are ambassadors highlighting their plight.”
Amarasekaran is in the process of building eco-lodges across the country, providing employment to local communities and emphasising the economic value of wildlife. This was, after all, the first country to which Sir David Attenborough ventured beyond Europe on his quest to find a Picathartes bird in 1954.
Although overshadowed by eastern and southern Africa, the western part of the continent still has thriving pockets of biodiversity. The jewel in Sierra Leone’s wild crown is Tiwai, an inland island on the Moa river in the Southern Province, a five-hour drive from Freetown.
After spending a couple of nights in a former research centre waking up to the squeals of 11 primate species, I’d ended my trip with a 5am boat ride searching for elusive pygmy hippos.
Having to bail out buckets of water after five of us had attempted to pile in, we’d set off along palm-fringed waterways leaving behind shiny new lifejackets dangling from a row of hooks. It was only after alighting midway to carry the plastic rowboat over rapids that I noticed a patchwork of thick plasters taping up holes in the hull.
But in a fledgling destination, every day is an education with new lessons to be learnt. (A boat capable of carrying six Sierra Leoneans, for example, will likely sink with the same number of overfed Europeans onboard.)
A work in progress, Sierra Leone is far from perfect or polished. But like a diamond in the rough, its value is set to rise.
When Freetown’s Cotton Tree fell, thousands came to cut branches for posterity. The roots remain firmly fixed and new shoots have since sprouted from the severed stump. It marks a new era for a country that continues to grow.
Sarah Marshall was a guest of the Sierra Leone tourist board. Rainbow Tours offers a 10-night Sierra Leone Made Simple itinerary from £3,145pp, including B&B accommodation, some meals, transfers and flights.

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