I have not been able to spend much time outside of Freetown during our time here in Sierra Leone. This has been for reasons both specific to my situation and more general to Sierra Leone. I was however determined to at least see something of the country and so with the help once again of Visit Sierra Leone (VSL) I booked my super amazing wife and I a trip to Outamba-Kilimi National Park. I chose OKNP, as the cool kids call it, for two reasons: 1) it is there, and 2) VSL had a trip outline we could do over a three-day weekend.

Getting there went very smoothly. Our guide and driver picked us up at our house and off we went for the approximately six-hour drive to the park. Along the way our guide tried to give us a bit of a tour of the country, in large part consisting charmingly of driving directions to various other cities. The main road network in Sierra Leone is both paved and seems to see little traffic (little traffic outside Freetown anyway), so on the first part of the trip we positively flew. I spent the whole time just looking out the window.

I am tempted to be reductive and say Sierra Leone is gorgeous but every landscape has its intricate charms if you embrace them. In Freetown you get used to living in and on the hills but as you depart Freetown you are traversing the broad plains that comprise most of the western half of the country. There are big skies and low forests. I enjoyed particularly looking at all the various agricultural research and demonstration centers we passed. You see some interesting stuff on the road, which included for us a single motorcycle carrying five people; the man in charge was scootched all the way up on the fuel tank with his four companions stacked behind him. This got an impressed whistle even from our driver and guide. As we moved upcountry we also saw lots and lots of goats and excitingly even some cows.

Along the way we pulled over briefly to pick up plantains but our main mid-journey break was at Makeni. This was our lunch stop but our guide’s main goal was to do all the shopping necessary for our weekend in the park. That could have been interesting to join but we were also happy to relax at a nice restaurant where we ate on the patio and watched the traffic go by. The guides probably also got better prices without us hovering around. In addition to the food the guides also picked up the chef which would join us for the weekend. She was phenomenal and the only flaw with the food on the trip was that it was too much and too good. Three gigantic meals a day that I felt terrible to not be able to finish. The menu was Sierra Leonean, with chicken and fish in peanut sauce the first night and cassava leaves the second. Lunch was pasta with hotdogs, which I understand is a slightly more recent import, but the breakfasts were also heaping and we did not do enough physical activity to justify all these calories. And she whipped this up on camp stoves, to boot.

But that was still slightly in the future as first we had to get from Makeni to the park. As we went along this part the road would proceed to get worse and worse, as is the wont of roads as you extend farther from city centers and the corridors between them in this part of the world. It was also outside Makeni that the hills started, which made the landscape remind me so much of Mbala district in Zambia. It was harmattan when we visited, which meant the distant parts of the landscape faded into blue dust, bolstered by smoke from the occasional brush burning. It was also dry which meant the landscape could have been greener, but I don’t know how far we could have possibly gotten in muddy roads.

The final barrier to the park was the Little Scarcies River, which we had to cross by ferry. I thoroughly enjoyed this experience. I don’t know how old the ferry is or who built it, but it is a pretty nice system. It is attached to either bank by cable though it is entirely person-powered. The ferry was at the far side as we pulled up so we watched as it was pulled across to our side. On either end of the ferry there are ramps, and as another fun feature they are balanced so as one side goes down the other goes up. We drove onboard and were joined by a motorcycle and smattering of other people looking to cross. After boarding the man slowly pulled us across, and we had a very peaceful time floating over the river. Having not sunk, we drove the last few miles to the park entrance.

To be continued…