Cruzinha da Garça

The stone path arrives the hard way, along ledges cut into sea cliffs, through Fontainhas, Corvo and Formiguinhas, the Atlantic churning white below. Then the land relents: low houses, hauled-up boats, and a small black-sand beach beneath the cliffs.

Cruzinha da Garça is the northern full stop of Santo Antão's celebrated coastal walk, roughly twelve kilometres of hand-laid cobbles from Ponta do Sol with some six hundred metres of climbing along the way. The village itself is a quiet fishing settlement: boats wait on the dark shore for a workable sea, terraced plots hold on above the houses, and a road comes in over the hill from the Chã de Igreja side, so walkers can be met rather than marched back. Most people take the route for the exposure and the villages strung along it; Cruzinha rewards them with the small ceremony of arriving somewhere the path was always pointing.