Fontainhas

The cobbled path rounds a cliff shoulder and the village appears all at once: coral, mint and ochre houses strung along a ridge so narrow it looks cut with a blade. Below them the ground falls hundreds of metres, and behind them the valley closes in vertical rock.

Fontainhas clings to the folded north coast of Santo Antão, Cape Verde's hiking island, where farmers cut terraces into slopes most countries would write off as cliff. The classic approach is still the hand-laid cobbled path from Ponta do Sol, about two kilometres of ledge-walking that opens the celebrated coastal route on towards Corvo and Cruzinha; a narrow road now reaches the village too, engineered to spare the historic path. National Geographic ranked the view here among the finest of any village on Earth, and the ridge is listed as national cultural heritage. It remains a working place rather than a viewpoint: a tiny square, gardens and plantations, and houses painted whatever colour each family chose.