Mark Stratton: Is Liberia Your Next Beach Escape?

Liberia’s coastline hides some of the most spectacular stretches of sand on the planet, let alone West Africa. But can it overcome a traumatic past to attract the travellers it deserves – and needs?

Liberian journalist Carielle Doe fondly recalls childhood memories of 1980s beach holidays in her homeland. “When I was little, I’d go to Hotel Africa at the weekend. People of means would lounge at the pool, and I remember playing in the water,” she told me.

Nowadays, the five-star Hotel Africa resort, built in 1979, is a wreck. It sustained damage by rebel fighters during the First Liberian Civil War (1989–1996) and was later looted. I entered the lobby’s carcass to find a cantilevered staircase dangling like a shattered spinal-cord while broken tiles and glass crunched underfoot. Not a window or door remained.

Yet in the wreckage lay hope. From Hotel Africa’s debris-strewn rooftop, I looked out to the coastline and traced one of the finest beaches I have ever seen. A golden thread of sand arced around the headland, where colossal cotton trees rose high above the coconut palms. They rippled in a persistent breeze that drove the Atlantic rollers higher up a foreshore that was deserted but for a sea eagle out for a stroll. It was easy to imagine the heady days that Carielle recalled.

This small West African nation, sandwiched between the Côte d’Ivoire and Sierra Leone, possesses 580km of Atlantic coastline, much of it consisting of undeveloped paradisiacal beaches. Yet tourism is virtually non-existent in Liberia.