Sierra Leone: Bo & Tiwai Island

We drove on inland from Freeport/Lungi Airport on excellent new roads funded by the EU with impressive Chinese engineering to Sierra Leone’s second city, Bo.

We stayed in a simple but welcoming hotel for a couple of nights which served as a convenient base to visit Tiwai Island national park.

We set off early and drove along a narrow red track to reach Tiwai village where we parked Lenny.

The ambition is for the village to be involved in and benefit from tourism to the island. A very clear and honest description in the national park base explains that this has only partially been achieved. Villagers are disappointed that not more income has been generated to benefit the village and likewise a small number of villagers have continued to hunt endangered species and mine for diamonds against the aims of the national park.

From the village, we were taken across the beautiful wide river Mao to the 12km2 island which had been protected since the 1990s, although during the Sierra Leonean civil war, monkeys were killed for meat and trade.

We took a long and humid walk through the rainforest and were humbled to realise how reliant we were on our guide to negotiate the narrow tracks and to get us out alive.

He led us through the forest nonchalantly chopping back the overgrown plants with his machete.

He used his machete to take a slice out of this tree to show us a milky substance which quickly turns rubbery and gluey. We spent the rest of the 3 hour walk rubbing it off our fingers.

We were lucky to see red and black & white Colobus monkeys playing in the tall trees above us which made us smile. There are also rare pygmy hippos on the island, we didn’t spot them, but our guide showed us fresh footprints & hippo poop.

The flora & fauna was on a gigantic scale like this cluster of bamboo and enormous old cheese tree.

We spotted an amazing spiky orange flower which our guide explained can be used to assess when rainy season is due to start.