Money, money, money

It has been interesting being in a country that has no coins! The only legal tender in Sierra Leone is bank notes, and not very big ones at that...

The note above; a Twenty Leones note, is the largest note available. At the present exchange rate in June 2025 that is worth approximately 64 pence. That and the Ten Leones note make up the bulk of the money that we draw out of the ships bank, things are not cheap here for foreigners so a day or weekend out needs quite a bundle of cash:

That pile is about £100. So you can see that we, and everyone else, spend quite a lot of time counting notes. For example a return taxi ride at 1,000 Leones requires a minimum of 50 notes but could even run to 100 or more!

For the first few weeks we thought that was quite a lot of small value notes, until we met these: The One and Two Leones notes, approximately 3p and 6p notes. Life really is very different here in so many ways...