The Turtle Islands are the ultimate place to feel like a castaway in Sierra Leone: a remote archipelago of eight islands of dazzling white sand and coconut palms, lost in the Atlantic off the southern coast, with no electricity, no mobile signal and hardly any tourists. There are no resorts or comforts here: there are unspoilt beaches, shallow turquoise waters, Sherbro fishing villages and an end-of-the-world silence.
The name comes from the Portuguese, who in the 15th century named the place 'Ilhas das Tartarugas' for its abundance of sea turtles; green turtles still nest on its beaches between November and April. Seven of the eight islands are inhabited by Sherbro communities who live from fishing and keep ancestral traditions alive, including one island, Hoong, off-limits to everyone except men initiated into the secret societies.
This guide explains how to reach the Turtle Islands (an adventure in itself, with hours by speedboat on the open sea), what to expect from a destination with no infrastructure, how to organise the trip with local operators, where to sleep in the area's rustic accommodation, and why this isolated, difficult, no-frills archipelago is one of the most authentic and memorable experiences West Africa has to offer.
Long before the Europeans arrived, the Turtle Islands were inhabited by the Sherbro people, fishermen of Sierra Leone's southern coast. In the 15th century, Portuguese navigators exploring the coast named them 'Ilhas das Tartarugas' (Turtle Islands) for the abundance of sea turtles. The archipelago became tied to Sherbro history and, later, to coastal trade and the slave trade that ravaged the Sherbro region. Isolated and undeveloped, the islands have kept their fishing way of life and their traditions to this day.
Read the full history ↓The heart of the Mende people: Bo, the country's second city, the river rainforest of Tiwai and its primates, and the remote Turtle Islands, where time seems to stand still.
Read the history of The south and the coast →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Long before any European sighted these shores, the Turtle Islands and the whole southern coast of present-day Sierra Leone were the land of the Sherbro people, one of the oldest ethnic groups in the country. The Sherbro are a people of the water: fishers, canoe navigators and coastal traders who, over centuries, learned to live from the rivers, estuaries and sea of this low, amphibious region of mangroves, islands and sandbanks.
Their world revolved around fishing, salt, trade and powerful secret societies, such as the male Poro and the female Bondo/Sande, which shaped social life, initiation and power. That heritage is still alive in the Turtle Islands. It is no accident that one of the eight islands, Hoong, is reserved for initiated men and closed to everyone else, a reminder of how deep Sherbro traditions run.
The large neighbouring island of Sherbro gave the people its name and for centuries was a centre of this coastal culture. The Turtle Islands, smaller and more isolated, remained a world apart of fishing villages, where life followed the tides, the shoals and the seasons, in a way of life that has changed surprisingly little to this day.
The islands' name has a precise and evocative origin. In the 15th century, Portuguese navigators became the first Europeans to explore the coast of West Africa systematically, searching for a route to spices and gold, and they sailed along this stretch of the Sierra Leone coast too. When they came across this archipelago, visited by large numbers of sea turtles, they named it 'Ilhas das Tartarugas', the Islands of the Turtles.
Those turtles were there for a reason: the archipelago's clean sandy beaches and shallow waters make a good nesting site, and green turtles still lay their eggs here, roughly from November to April. The Portuguese name, later rendered in English as Turtle Islands, outlasted the centuries and the changes of rule, a trace of those first contacts between Europe and this coast.
The Portuguese did not stay, but they opened an era of contact, and of trade, between the Sierra Leone coast and the rest of the Atlantic world. From then on, the Sherbro region and its coastline became ever more caught up in coastal trade networks, first in goods and very soon, tragically, in people.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries, the Sherbro region, which includes the Turtle Islands, became one of the theatres of the Atlantic slave trade that bled West Africa dry. Its maze of islands, estuaries and channels was hard to police, which made it well suited to the traffic. European and Afro-European traders set up trading posts on the coast, and captives seized in the interior were brought down to the shore to be shipped to the Americas.
Sherbro Island and its surroundings played a significant part in this history, including figures from mixed Afro-European families who controlled the coastal trade. The region was marked by that past, like the whole coast of Sierra Leone, whose very name and whose capital, Freetown, are bound up with the history of slavery and of the freed slaves who founded it anew in the late 18th century.
In the 19th century, after abolition and the British settlement at Freetown, the Royal Navy patrolled these waters to intercept slave ships. The Sherbro region was gradually drawn into the British sphere, first through treaties and then, in 1896, as part of the Sierra Leone Protectorate. Meanwhile the Turtle Islands, isolated and poor, carried on with their fishing life, far from the major events.
Throughout the 20th century, the Turtle Islands stayed on the margins of development and national politics. With no electricity, no roads (impossible on an archipelago) and no meaningful state services, the Sherbro communities went on living from small-scale fishing and from smoking fish to trade with the mainland, in a subsistence and barter economy barely touched by modernity.
That isolation had a bitter side (poverty, a lack of healthcare and schooling, exposure to the weather and the sea) and a side that is valuable today: a traditional way of life and a natural environment that survived almost intact. During the brutal civil war of 1991-2002, which devastated much of the country, the islands' remoteness kept them relatively safe from the worst of the violence that swept the mainland.
That mix of poverty and isolation explains why the Turtle Islands reached the 21st century as one of the most unspoilt and authentic corners of Sierra Leone: undeveloped beaches, villages without electricity, traditions intact. What for generations was a sign of neglect and hardship has become, for today's traveller, their greatest appeal.
In the 21st century, the Turtle Islands are beginning to appear, very tentatively, on the adventure travel map as one of the most remote and pristine destinations in West Africa: the place 'to feel like a castaway', reached after hours by speedboat on the open sea, where there is nothing but beach, sea, coconut palms and fishing villages. Operators such as Visit Sierra Leone and Dalton's organise the demanding crossings from Freetown or the Banana Islands.
Tourism, still tiny, gives the Sherbro communities a source of income besides fishing, but it also raises challenges: how to welcome visitors without harming the culture or the environment, how to share the benefits, and how to protect the turtle nesting beaches. The archipelago also faces serious threats, from overfishing and coastal erosion to rising sea levels, which endanger these low, sandy islands.
For travellers, the Turtle Islands are both a privilege and a responsibility: a rare chance to get to know an untouched paradise and an ancient seafaring culture, along with the duty to do so respectfully, leaving as little trace as possible and supporting the local communities. In an increasingly connected and uniform world, this archipelago without electricity or phone signal is a fragile relic of another time, and deserves to be visited with care.
