San-Pédro is the second-largest port city in Ivory Coast, a bustling Atlantic town of around 200,000 people on the country's southwestern coast. Built up in the 1970s around a deep-water port to export cocoa, timber, and rubber, it has a more modern feel than many Ivorian cities, with wide boulevards and a grid layout that makes it easy to navigate. The port remains the economic engine, but the real attraction for visitors is the coastline — long stretches of sandy beach fringed by coconut palms, with warm water and relatively few people.
Bali Beach is the most accessible stretch, a few kilometres west of the centre, while the beaches further west toward the Liberian border grow progressively emptier and wilder. Monogaga Beach, to the east, sits within a classified forest and has a lagoon backing the shore. The city itself has a lively Grand Marché and a handful of maquis — open-air restaurants — where you can get excellent grilled fish straight off the boats. San-Pédro is also a reasonable base for exploring the nearby Taï National Park, one of the last major tracts of primary rainforest in West Africa and a UNESCO World Heritage site, though getting there requires some planning and a guide.