Surf’s Up in Sierra Leone

It may seem odd at first that a surfer appears on the cover of the Bradt’s guidebook to Sierra Leone. Like are they serious, dude? Absolutely.

From Bureh Beach and River No. 2 near Freetown to super-remote Sulima near the Liberian border, Sierra Leone boasts some of the continent’s best surf breaks and most beautiful beaches.

“I started about 20 years back,” says Donald Macauley, the smiling surfer on the cover of that Brandt book and one of the movers and shakers behind the Bureh Beach Surf Club. “I came from a family of fishermen, and when one of the wooden boats broke up, we used some of the boards to start surfing. Then surfers from overseas started coming here and would leave their boards behind.”

Later we learned proper surfing from British soldiers from the International Military Training & Advisory Team (IMATT) stationed in Sierra Leone from 2000 to 2013 following the civil war.

Around that same time Irishman Shane O’Connor spent quite a bit of time surfing Bureh and helped found the local surf club in 2012.

“It’s literally the perfect place to learn how to surf,” O’Connor recently told The Irish Times in Dublin. “Beautiful warm water, a tropical beach, a mountain with tropical rainforests in the background, a really nice community there that will look after you and give you a good and safe experience.”

Bureh Beach Surf Club offers inexpensive board rentals and surf lessons at 180 Leones (US$8) per hour. The club also offers meals, beverages and basic overnight accommodation in beachside rooms. “It’s a community-based project,” says Macauley. All of the instructors are volunteers and profits are remitted to the community.

Check out the Sierra Leone surf forecast here www.surf-forecast.com/regions/Sierra-Leone for the latest, greatest news on wave conditions along the coast.

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