West Africa

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By Mark Stratton

MAY 14, 2024

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Under a giant cotton tree, a punchy staccato beat from goatskin-covered drums created an intoxicating rhythm amid the dilapidated Portuguese buildings. We arrived ashore by zodiac dinghies into the quay at Bolama in the Bijagós Archipelago, one of eighty-eight small islands off the little-known coastline of Guinea-Bissau, in West Africa. This was our welcome to a community that hardly any visitors ever visit. By the seafront, fruit bats rose into the withering heat as half a dozen local ladies with red blouses emblazoned with silver-coloured leaves sashayed, seemingly effortlessly, to the drumbeat. A singer related stories of the Bijagós people’s animist beliefs of the spirits of the forest.

Guinea-Bissau receives very few visitors, yet it was part of a 13-day expedition cruise onboard the S/H Vega on a seven-country voyage from Ghana to Senegal. Expedition cruising is new to West Africa and ours was a pioneering small ship journey at the vanguard of exploring numerous cultures and natural areas still immersed in the emotive legacy of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. If ever there is a clue as to how unheralded cruising West Africa is, when our vessel called in at Monrovia, in Liberia, their minister of tourism came onboard because it was the first cruise ship to dock there in 12 years.

Coastal West Africa can be defined as nations running northwards from Nigeria to Senegal, including the offshore islands of Cape Verde, and now the time seems to be right for an expansion of small ship cruises to the region. “First and foremost, we’re repositioning the Vega between Antarctica and the Arctic,” explained the UK & Ireland general manager of Vega’s operator. “But also the Expedition Cruise Network last year identified passengers were increasingly looking to Africa for new adventures”. This is not an empty statement as our vessel was full.

Voyages will switch between French, Portuguese, and British colonial influences. We sailed between Ghana’s slave castle coast and the mayhem of Cote d’Ivoire’s port city of Abidjan to a chimpanzee rescue sanctuary in Sierra Leone, and ended in the buzzy Francophone city of Dakar, in Senegal. Throughout, during ship lectures, we learned of a gritty past that has shaped this unheralded region. West Africa has faced many challenges through slavery, war, political uncertainty, and ecological destruction, but it makes for compelling travel. Travelling overland in West Africa – and trust me, I have tried it - is a huge challenge. Long hot dusty days and border hassles. Yet on a small expedition vessel, visas are taken care of, and an air-conditioned cabin to retreat to after too much sunshine, the sheer diversity of West Africa has to be seen to be believed, from country to country.