• The most accessible part of Sierra Leone is the Freetown Peninsula. From Leicester Peak, superb views of the city between the sea and the mountains unfold below, and a narrow, steep road through the mountains leads to the old Creole villages (dating from 1800) of Leicester, Gloucester and Regent. The area was chosen as a resettlement area for liberated slaves who built the villages of Hastings, Kent, Sussex, Waterloo, Wellington and York.

• Freetown itself, surrounded by thickly vegetated hills, is both a colourful and historic port. Attractions include a 500-year-old cotton tree; the museum; the De Ruyter Stone; Government Wharf and ‘King’s Yard’ (where freed slaves waited to be given land); Fourah Bay College, the oldest university in West Africa; Marcon’s Church, built in 1820; and the City Hotel, immortalised in Graham Greene’s novel The Heart of the Matter. The King Jimmy Market and the bazaars offer a colourful spectacle and interesting shopping.

• A boat trip up the Rokel River to Bunce Island, one of the first slave trading stations of West Africa, makes an interesting excursion.

• The Outamba-Kilimi National Park in northern Sierra Leone, which can be reached from Freetown by road or air, offers varied and spectacular scenery; at this and other reserves there are game animals such as elephants, chimpanzees and pigmy hippos.

• The Sakanbiarwa plant reserve has an extensive collection of orchids, which are at their best early in the year.

See Contact Addresses for further tourist information.