Coverage / Sierra Leone

Sierra Leone

Western Africa

A small West African country on the Atlantic, built around the forested Freetown Peninsula and its surf beaches, the Upper Guinea rainforest that shelters chimpanzees and pygmy hippos, and a heavy diaspora heritage anchored by the Bunce Island slave fort.

4 activities · 5 pairings · 5 verified providers

What you can do in Sierra Leone

Running / Endurance

Sierra Leone MarathonMakeniOctThe Sierra Leone Marathon turns Makeni into the country's running capital for a week each year, and it is one of the most purposeful races in the world. Founded and run by the charity Street Child, every entrant runs in support of the same cause, funding education and child welfare across Sierra Leone, which makes the event rare in a sport crowded with commercial fields. The course loops out from Makeni city centre into the surrounding hills and villages of the north, a hot, hard, red-dirt route where runners are cheered through communities that rarely see visitors. There are full and half marathon distances plus 10k and 5k options and a 75-kilometre cycle challenge, so the day suits serious marathoners and first-timers alike. Voted best international event at the 2017 Running Awards, it pairs a genuine physical challenge with a hands-on look at the projects the entry fees pay for. For a runner who wants the race to mean something beyond a finish time, this is the reason to come to Makeni.

Surfing

Bureh BeachJan Feb Mar Oct Nov DecBureh Beach is where surfing in Sierra Leone began, a sheltered peninsula bay with a soft, forgiving beach break that is close to ideal for learning. The waves peel over sand in a wide bay backed by palms and green hills, small and manageable through much of the year and rarely crowded, so beginners get room and time to stand up. The Bureh Beach Surf Club, opened in 2012 as the country's first surf club, is the heart of it, a community cooperative of local young surfers who teach lessons, rent boards and run the beachside huts, with the money going back into the village. Days here are simple and social, a lesson or two, fresh fish and rice from the club kitchen, and a swim in warm Atlantic water a long way from any resort strip. The wider Freetown Peninsula strings together beach after beach, but Bureh is the one with a surf culture of its own. For a first taste of West African surf with a community that built the scene, come here.

Wildlife Safaris

Witness / Attend

Bunce IslandJan Feb Mar Apr May Nov DecBunce Island is one of the most important and least-visited sites of the transatlantic slave trade, a place that connects Sierra Leone directly to the rice plantations of the American South. From this rocky island in the Sierra Leone River, a British slave castle operated through much of the 18th century, and an estimated thirty thousand or more captive Africans passed through its holding yards and out through its river gate to the Americas, many of them rice-country people sold to South Carolina and Georgia, where their skills built the Lowcountry Gullah culture. The ruins still stand, the fort walls, the cannons, the workers' quarters, the cemetery and the gate to the water, wrapped in silence and weighed with history. You visit by boat from Freetown with a guide who reads the stones and the records, and the crossing itself, up the wide brown estuary, sets the scale of the place. For African American families tracing roots and for any traveller who wants to stand where this history happened, Bunce Island is a hard, essential pilgrimage.

Best months at a glance

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Running
Surfing
Wildlife Safaris
Witness / Attend