Cape Verde
Maio
Three thousand turtles a summer nest on an island that is one whole biosphere reserve.
Maio is Santiago's quiet neighbour, flat and golden, ringed by dozens of named beaches and crossed by pale roads through acacia woodland. Card games and Creole music set the pace of the capital, and nothing on the island appears to hurry, including the sea turtles.
UNESCO declared the whole of Maio and its surrounding waters a biosphere reserve in 2020, tying together dunes, salt pans, Cape Verde's largest forested area at Calheta, and beaches where around three thousand female turtles come ashore to nest between June and September, watched only with a guide or biologist. Offshore live cetaceans and sharks; overhead, more than a hundred migratory bird species are on record. The island's human history is salt: the capital was once Porto Inglês, named for the British ships that loaded here, and the salt pans still glitter beside town. Bicycles cover the distances honestly, and the villages measure their days in fishing, farming and festivals.
Solo
Rent a bicycle, string together beaches and salt pans at your own cadence, and book the guided turtle walk in season.
Couple
Take several unhurried days: a quiet morning beach, a village lunch, an evening among the card players of the capital.
- The entire island and its marine zone form a UNESCO biosphere reserve, designated in 2020.
- Around three thousand turtles nest on Maio's beaches between June and September, observed only with guides.
- The salt pans of Porto Inglês recall the island's centuries as a salt port for British ships.
- Calheta holds Cape Verde's largest forested area, acacia woodland on a flat desert island.
Villa Maris cooks from its own ground: eggs from its hens, greenhouse vegetables, island-caught fish and proper cachupa.
Breakfast arrives Maio-style at the guesthouses: local cheese, homemade milk pudding and hibiscus bissap juice.
Colonsay
Scotland
A tide-linked island that blooms so wildly botanists cross the country for it.
Mangue Seco
Brazil
Dunes advancing over the coconut groves, eight-metre palms buried to the tips of their fronds.
Pantelleria
Italy
A volcanic island between Sicily and Tunisia where dammuso houses are built to survive constant wind.
Calhau
Cape Verde
Climb a dead volcano from the beach and count three uninhabited islands from its rim.
São Filipe
Cape Verde
A hundred pastel sobrados crowd the clifftop above a beach of jet-black volcanic sand.
Mindelo
Cape Verde
Morna drifts from harbour bars where the barefoot diva Cesária Évora first sang for sailors.
Cidade Velha
Cape Verde
The tropics' first colonial city keeps its slave pillory standing in the square.