Just a few kilometres from the bustle of Conakry, the Los Islands are the capital's great breather: an archipelago of three main islands — Kassa, Room and Tamara — with sandy beaches, coconut palms, warm waters and fishing villages, all half an hour away by pirogue. Their name comes from the Portuguese 'Ilhas dos Ídolos', 'islands of the idols', a reminder of the first European navigators who sailed along this coast.
Each island has its own character: Kassa is the closest and most festive, with the best beaches for swimming and several daytime restaurants; Room, the quietest and most wooded; and Tamara, the largest and wildest, with its lighthouse on the rocks and a history tied to the colonial era. Beneath that tropical postcard lies an intense history: the islands were a slave depot during the Atlantic slave trade and, in the 20th century, the site of the country's first bauxite mining.
This guide explains how to organise the trip from Conakry, what to expect from each island, where to eat fresh fish and how to make the most of the archipelago, whether for a beach day or a getaway of one or two nights. The Los Islands don't have much in the way of tourist services, and that is precisely their charm: they are a slice of simple, authentic tropics right on the capital's doorstep.
The Los Islands owe their name to Portuguese navigators, who christened them 'Ilhas dos Ídolos'. During the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade they served as a slave depot — above all Kassa and Room — an activity that ended in 1818 when the British governor of Sierra Leone signed a treaty that put a stop to the trade in the archipelago; in fact the islands remained under British administration until 1904, when they passed to French Guinea. In 1948 Guinea's first bauxite mining began on Kassa, and the deposit was exhausted around 1966. Their full story, from the idols to bauxite, is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The coastal strip of the Soussou and the Baga, where France built Conakry on an island and where the railway from the interior reached the sea.
Read the history of Lower Guinea and the Atlantic coast →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The name of the Los Islands is an echo of the first Europeans who sailed this coast. In the 15th century, Portuguese sailors exploring the shoreline of present-day Guinea in search of trade routes named this small archipelago off the Kaloum peninsula 'Ilhas dos Ídolos', the 'islands of the idols', probably because of the ritual objects and beliefs of the local people. Over time, passing through French and English mouths, 'dos Ídolos' was shortened to 'de Los' or 'de Loos', the name that has stuck.
Before the Europeans arrived, the islands were home to coastal peoples, the Susu and the Baga, who lived from fishing and farming and were part of the trade networks of the region known as the 'Rivers of the South'. Their position, within sight of the mainland but cut off by the sea, made them a strategic spot: easy to control, with good anchorages and water, and ideal for setting up trading posts.
From the 16th century, the Portuguese and then other Europeans set up trading points in the area. The islands were drawn into a traffic that would shape their history for centuries: first the exchange of goods and, very soon and on a growing scale, the trade in human beings.
During the centuries of the Atlantic slave trade, the Los Islands played a role that history books have tended to forget: they were a slave depot, a place where people captured inland were held before being shipped to the Americas. Being islands made them especially 'useful' for that trade: escaping from an island was hard, and ships could anchor safely.
Throughout the 18th century, European merchants set up trading posts on the islands. By the middle of that century there are records of trading establishments on Kassa, devoted to a traffic that spread and prolonged the horror of slavery on this part of the African coast. Kassa and Room, peaceful beaches today, were the setting for that dark chapter, whose memory is only now beginning to be recovered.
The slave trade on the islands ended with British abolition. In 1818, the governor of the neighbouring colony of Sierra Leone signed a treaty with a local chief under which the Los Islands passed to British control in exchange for an annual payment, and that put an end to the slave trade in the archipelago. The islands were thus tied to Freetown's British orbit for much of the 19th century.
For almost the whole of the 19th century, the Los Islands were under British administration, as an extension of the colony of Sierra Leone. It was a time of garrisons, lighthouses and small outposts, while on the mainland France was pushing ahead to establish its colony of French Guinea, with its capital in nearby Conakry.
The islands' closeness to Conakry, right in view of the new French colonial capital, made British ownership more and more awkward for France. In the end, as part of the colonial agreements through which the European powers carved up Africa, the United Kingdom handed the Los Islands to France in 1904, adding them to French Guinea, where they geographically belonged.
From then on, the islands shared Guinea's fate: a French colony until 1958 and then part of the independent country. In the French colonial era, Tamara, the largest island, housed military installations and a prison, and the islands kept buildings, lighthouses and remains from that period that can still be seen today among the vegetation.
The 20th century brought a new chapter to the Los Islands, this time a mining one. Guinea has some of the largest bauxite reserves in the world (bauxite is the ore that aluminium is made from), and the country's first industrial mining of it did not start inland but here, on the island of Kassa. In 1948, in the middle of the colonial era, Guinea's first bauxite mine opened on Kassa.
The Kassa mine ran for almost two decades, digging ore out of the island and shipping it out by sea. It shut down around November 1966, once the deposits were all but exhausted. By then, large-scale bauxite mining had already moved to the huge deposits on the mainland, at Boké, Kindia and Fria, which would turn Guinea into one of the world's leading producers.
Kassa still has some traces of that mining era, such as installations and scars in the ground, that are part of the island's historical landscape. So, in a small space, the Los Islands hold layer upon layer of history: the idols that gave them their name, the slave trade, British and French rule, and the country's first bauxite.
Today the Los Islands are, above all, Conakry's green lung and beach. At weekends, hundreds of people from Conakry cross over by pirogue to escape the heat and noise of the capital and spend the day on Kassa's beaches, eating fish and swimming in warm water. It is local, popular and simple tourism, very different from the big beach resorts found on other African coasts.
The archipelago has huge tourism potential that remains largely untapped. Infrastructure is minimal (a few basic places to stay, beach restaurants and not much else), and there are problems with waste management and conservation. At the same time, that lack of development is what keeps its authentic character: fishing villages, tropical nature and a calm that is surprising so close to a big city.
For travellers, the Los Islands offer a combination that is hard to find: beaches and palm trees half an hour from an African capital, with layers of history beneath the sand. Lively Kassa, quiet Room and wild Tamara each sum up, in their own way, the long journey of these islands: from 'islands of the idols' to slave depot, from British to French colony, from bauxite mine to Conakry's tropical getaway.
