West African civil wars are not known for their box office appeal and it’s a measure of Sierra Leone’s brutal civil conflict that even Hollywood identified in it the raw material for profit. However, whatever the perceptions reinforced by ‘that bloody film’ the surprisingly positive reality is that Return to Sierra Leone should not just be a working title for Leo’s sequel to Blood Diamond but rather an act of faith by adventurous travellers everywhere.

A recent promotion from 177 (bottom place) to 176 in the UN’s Human Development rankings unfairly ignores the great progress - and even greater potential in Sierra Leone. Hostilities ceased six years ago following a notably successful intervention by British and UN troops. Realpolitik sees former combatants sharing political power, elsewhere international courts chart the course of justice for war criminals. Municipal elections have been held without major incident and the signs are positive for July’s first post war national elections.

In late March, after taking one of three direct flights from London, I stepped out into the night for that first breath of fertile Salone air. Heading to Freetown, the final journey from Lungi Airport entailed either a dubious-looking ferry or a piece of Russian aviation history – a classic Mil Mi-8 heli. This time the choice is made for me, a taxi is waiting and he’s blowing his horn, I make the ferry connection and arrive at my hotel only five minutes later than the airborne brigade.

As I’m checking in a 4WD with diplomatic plates pulls up and out from the rear door steps an elegant gentlemen carrying a black briefcase. He’s dressed in a remarkable tropical green suit featuring over its entirety a repeated prawn motif. Kansas this ain’t.

By 1990 over 28,000 palid Europeans a year, anticipating Bounty Bar beaches and bikinis, populated the justly famed white-sand beaches of the Freetown Peninsula. Sierra Leone was earning over $14 million in tourism per year and seemed set to become another Gambia with all the dubious associated benefits of mass tourism.

The war, as wars do, changed all that. Now it’s not a case of ‘Where you come from?’ rather, ‘Which agency you work for?’ There are no visible tourists, none, not even the inevitable lone Swiss attempting global circumnavigation by unicycle.

Today, walking the city one could easily forget the history though it’s obvious that Freetown’s infrastructure is creaking. The current population, in excess of 1 million, is partly the result of a wartime influx of rural refugees. Electricity is fitful, hotels and offices relying on their own generators. Water is trundled around by lorry, and down the supply line by boys with ingenious carts and hard-headed women with strong necks and yellow plastic jerries. However, here and there teams of labourers toil, shovelling piles of semi-fossilised refuse into state-of-the-art refuse trucks. Others chop back undergrowth surrounding boundary walls and road-sides, working to reclaim the streets.

Walking down the puddled red dirt of Signal Hill Road towards Congo Cross, Freetown feels safe and relaxed, its inhabitants proving amongst the friendliest city people around. Downtown, Siaka Stevens Street is filled with traffic that still manages to negotiate a steady if slow progress. Street vendors chance a few pitches for business. By no means hassle, their verbal advertising ranges from superior foreign currency exchange facilities ‘Chench, Chench Mister’, to high quality CDs and DVDs, ‘Awe yu do, Ha yu sin Idi Amin Dada?’, and afro hair extensions ‘Rill human hair’.

For a few moments sirens shriek above the street din but it’s no more than an embarrassingly self-important convoy of white land cruisers, lights blazing and headed by motorcycle outriders. The traffic parts, and they’re gone, their air-conditioned corridor closed seamlessly by solidly humid air.

Time for refreshment and the open-fronted Downtown Restaurant seems like my kind of establishment, providing a languid fan-cooled niche for low-key people-watching. A steady stream of family and visitors pass on news, conduct a little commerce, even occasionally ordering food. I suck down my Parrot-brand ginger beer before it evaporates and with wildlife on my mind decide to check out nearby Tacugama Chimp Sanctuary.

I find a Peugeot 504 taxi easily, sadly the other 8 passengers have no problems either. After squeezing into whatever space is available each new fare introduces themselves with a polite and considered ‘Good Afternoon’. The driver, seeing that even the Peugeot’s famously accommodating cabin has reached its elastic limit, sets off. At this point the 9th passenger announces its presence with a plaintive and sustained bleat. Our ascent to Hill Station is punctuated by a short fodder foraging stop to placate the goat before I extract myself for a connecting ride to Tacugama.

Bala Amarasekaran heads-up Tacugama’s pioneering project, home to around 90 rescued chimps, and has seen it through the worst of times. ‘We were attacked three times during the war but we had an obligation to save our chimps, so we stayed on.’ Throughout, the whole facility is well thought out and maintained to high standard, and far removed from an anthropomorphic tea party.

Times recommends

• Dubai cheaper than Doncaster as room rates tumble
• World Cup 2010 - how to follow England
• Copenhagen: Europe's greenest city