Cape Verde
Deserto de Viana
Saharan sand blown across the Atlantic has built a pocket desert ringed by ocean.
The sand under your feet began in the Sahara, rode the trade wind across open ocean, and settled here in ridges of blinding white. Black volcanic stones break the surface like punctuation, and from a dune crest the island's brown hills ring the whiteness.
Deserto de Viana fills a shallow corridor in Boa Vista's north-west interior, about five kilometres long and one wide, with dunes climbing to around fifty metres. It is a pocket desert rather than an endless one, and that is the surprise of it: Saharan grains accumulating on an Atlantic island, sculpted daily by the same wind that delivered them. Excursions come by four-wheel drive or quad, and the best of them get out and walk, or slide the steeper faces on wooden boards; after dark the desert becomes one of the island's stargazing spots, with nothing electric in sight. Carry water and sun cover, because the white sand doubles the glare.
Couple
Come as the light fails, when the ridges turn copper and every footprint throws a shadow, and stay on for the stars.
Friends
Ride out by 4x4, then earn the descent: a wooden board and a fifty-metre dune face settle most arguments.
- The desert's sand is carried thousands of kilometres from the Sahara on the trade winds.
- The dune field runs about five kilometres by one, with crests rising to around fifty metres.
- White sand, black volcanic stones and sparse plants make the archipelago's largest desert feel lunar.
- Sandboarding and clear-night stargazing extend a visit beyond the classic dune photograph.
There is nothing out here but sand and wind; stock up in Sal Rei or Rabil and take twice the water you think.
Back in the villages afterwards, kitchens do slow cachupa and the day's landing; eat after the dunes, not among them.
Taveuni
Fiji
Stand astride the 180th meridian in rainforest, one foot in today, one in yesterday.
Parque Nacional Conguillío
Chile
Araucaria crowns stand over black lava and clear lakes beneath Volcán Llaima.
Corcovado National Park
Costa Rica
National Geographic called it the most biologically intense place on Earth. They undersold it.
Navala Village
Fiji
Two hundred thatched bures, all built the same size, climb a valley above the Ba River.
Fontainhas
Cape Verde
Pastel houses balance on a blade of volcanic ridge above the hammering Atlantic.
Mindelo
Cape Verde
Morna drifts from harbour bars where the barefoot diva Cesária Évora first sang for sailors.
Vale do Paúl
Cape Verde
Sugarcane and coffee terraces pour off a crater rim into a valley threaded with running water.
Cidade Velha
Cape Verde
The tropics' first colonial city keeps its slave pillory standing in the square.