Sal has the water. The other islands have everything else.
Which salt-lake trip actually stops at Shark Bay. What a catamaran half day costs out of Santa Maria. Whether Santo Antão is worth the ferry. Reviews of the tours worth your week.
Shark Bay, a salt crater you float in, and a deck on the Atlantic.
The four bookings most first weeks here are built around, what each costs and who it suits.
01The first full dayIsland Experience Tour with a Certified Local GuideOne loop of Sal with a local guide: the salt crater, the blue pool at Buracona, Palmeira harbour and lunch. More travellers take it than anything else in the country.
02The three-stop dayAll-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay TourPedra de Lume, the Blue Eye and Shark Bay in one run, food and pickups included. Go on a morning slot; the blue pool only lights up near midday.
03The day on deckAll-Inclusive Half-Day Lounge Catamaran CruiseHalf a day out of Santa Maria under sail, with lunch and a swim stop off the reef. The splurge the rest of the week gets planned around.
04The Boa Vista dayShark, Turtles, Cave, Sandboarding & Tasting TourLemon sharks, a turtle beach, the lava cave at Rocha Estância and a run down the dunes on a board. The island in one long drive.
Two islands for the water, four for everything else.
Sal and Boa Vista are flat, dry and built around the beach. Santiago holds the capital and the first colonial town in the tropics, São Vicente the music, Santo Antão the green ravines, Fogo a live volcano you can climb. Six starting points, and the best day out on each.
Catamaran, mask or shark bay. Three ways to spend a day in the Atlantic.
The water here is warm, clear and busier with wildlife than the brochures let on. Three kinds of day out, what it costs to get on each one, and which island it suits.
Sal: one road, and three days of things to do off it.
Everything on Sal →
Santa Maria sits at the southern tip with the pier, the fish market and the wind. North of it the island is salt pans, lava shelves and a shark bay you wade into. These three fill the days between beach mornings.
Shark Bay, standing waist deep
Lemon sharks patrol the shallows at Regona and the trips walk you in beside them. They are wary, not dangerous, and the guides keep the group in a line so nobody herds them out to sea.
Pedra de Lume, inside the crater
A salt pan in the mouth of an old volcano, worked for three centuries and now brine dense enough to hold you flat on the surface. Ten minutes is plenty, and the fresh-water shower afterwards is not optional.
Half a day off Santa Maria
The catamarans leave from the pier, run the coast to a sheltered reef and drop the ladder for an hour. Drinks and a grill come with the bigger ones; the small boats are cheaper and rock more.
The days out Cape Verde is booked for.
Everything in the archipelago →The trips more travellers take than any other in the islands, and what earns each of them the slot.
1
Island Experience Tour with a Certified Local Guide
Spend seven hours crossing Sal with a local guide such as Tony, Cristian, Nany, or Kiki. Visit Pedra de Lume, Buracona’s Blue Eye, Shark Bay, Palmeira, Espargos, Santa Maria, and Kite Beach. Float in salt water, see lemon sharks close to shore, and choose an optional local lunch. Transport, hotel pickup, photos, and multilingual guiding are included.
From · $41
Read our review →
2
All-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay Tour
from $53
3
Experience on Sal Island with native and certified guide (including sharks)
from $36
4
Blu eye, Salt lake, Lemon Sharks & Palmeira
from $35
5
Guided Snorkeling and Reef Tour
from $44
6
Complete Excursion and Flight on the Zipline Cabo Verde
from $56
7
Horse Riding in Sal Island – Cabo Verde
from $60
8
All-Inclusive Half-Day Lounge Catamaran Cruise
from $81
The dry interior is the half most people fly home without seeing.
Twenty minutes past the hotels the tarmac stops and the islands turn to sand, black lava and salt pans. Buggies and quads run the Viana desert and the tracks behind Santa Maria, jeeps go out to the Cabo Santa Maria wreck, and the old salt crater at Pedra de Lume floats you like a cork.
Mindelo is the one town here that stays up late.
The port that grew on coal money kept the best of it: painted colonial fronts, a fish market that opens at dawn, and the bars where morna is still played by people who knew Cesária Évora. Monte Verde is behind it, the ferry to Santo Antão leaves from the quay.
Every São Vicente day out →
Boa Vista is a beach with a desert behind it.
Fifty kilometres of empty sand, a rusting Spanish freighter half in the surf, and the Viana dunes blowing inland from the coast. The loggerheads come ashore on the eastern beaches from June, and almost nothing here is reachable without four-wheel drive.
- 1Shark, Turtles, Cave, Sandboarding & Tasting Tourfrom $70
- 2Turtle, Shark, Santa Monica, Sandboard & Tastingfrom $76
- 3Santa Monica, Dunes, Caves and Village 4×4 Tourfrom $76
What a day out in Cape Verde actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Plenty of the best hours here cost less than the taxi to the airport.
Shark Bay, the salt crater, town walks and the short snorkel hops off Santa Maria.
The full island loops, catamaran half days, jeep runs across Boa Vista and the Fogo summit.
Private buggies, chartered boats and the multi-day crossings to Santo Antão and Fogo.
- 12-Hour Buggy Desert Adventurefrom $170
- 2Full day Sailing yacht – Beautiful day on the Atlantic Oceanfrom $150
- 34-Hour Buggy Island Tourfrom $305
Three things the Atlantic only does on these islands.
Beach days and boat trips exist everywhere warm. A lava pool that lights up from below, a crater you float in, and a hatching beach counted every night do not.
The Blue Eye at Buracona
A collapsed lava tube on Sal’s west coast opens to the sea below the waterline, and for about an hour either side of midday the sun drops through the hole and the whole pool turns electric blue. Earlier or later it is a dark hollow in black rock. Swell decides whether anyone gets down to the ledge.
- 1All-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,033 reviews
- 2Blu eye, Salt lake, Lemon Sharks & Palmeira★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,003 reviews
- 3Santa Maria, Sal: All inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 311 reviews
Floating at Pedra de Lume
Salt was mined in this crater from the 1800s, hauled out through a tunnel cut for the purpose, and the pans left behind are saltier than the sea by a wide margin. You do not swim so much as lie on top of the water. Cuts sting, the camera stays dry, and the shower queue afterwards is the real crowd.
- 1All-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,033 reviews
- 2Blu eye, Salt lake, Lemon Sharks & Palmeira★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,003 reviews
- 3Santa Maria, Sal: All inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 311 reviews
Loggerheads coming ashore
Cape Verde hosts one of the largest loggerhead nesting populations on earth, and most of it lands on the eastern beaches of Boa Vista and Sal. Walks go out after dark with a ranger, red torches only, and the rule is the same everywhere: the turtle gets the beach, you get the back row.
- 1Sea Turtle Watching Experience on Sal Island★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 446 reviews
- 2Shark, Turtles, Cave, Sandboarding & Tasting Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 328 reviews
- 3Sal Island Sea Turtle Watching Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 256 reviews
Four Cape Verdean days that run on somebody else’s calendar.
Most of this trip can be arranged at the hotel desk the evening before. These four cannot: they answer to nesting season, whale migration, a ferry timetable and a mountain.
- 01Sea Turtle Watching Experience on Sal IslandNesting runs roughly June to October and the beaches are patrolled. Outside those months there is nothing to see, and inside them the ranger groups are capped.
- 02Whale Watching Trip with MotoryachtHumpbacks pass these islands in spring, mostly March to May. The boats simply stop running when the season ends.
- 03Santo Antão Day Trip with Local GuideThere is no airport. Everything starts with the Mindelo ferry, which sails to a timetable and cancels in a big swell.
- 04Fogo Island: Pico do Fogo Volcano Summit HikeThe summit day begins before dawn from the caldera floor, so it needs a night at Chã das Caldeiras, not a morning decision.
The trade wind blows hardest from December to March. Plan with it.
It is why the kite schools cluster at Santa Maria, and why an afternoon boat can be cancelled at short notice between Christmas and Easter. The answers are the same every year: get in the water instead of on it, get inland out of the gusts, or spend the afternoon in somebody’s kitchen.
- 1Discover Scuba Diving in Salfrom $120
- 2Half-Day Diving in Salfrom $109
- 3Discover Scuba Divingfrom $135
Cachupa takes a night and a morning, and everyone’s grandmother made it better.
Corn, beans and whatever the boat brought in, cooked slow and eaten twice. Book the class that ends as lunch, the market walk that explains the grogue, and the tasting nights where the tuna is two hours out of the water.
By island — the six with something to book
By kind of day — water, sand, summit or kitchen
Sal, Boa Vista, São Vicente, Santo Antão: the run that fits a fortnight.
Just added to the Cape Verde list.
More of the new arrivals →
Watch Sea Turtles Nesting – Night Tour in Sal Island
Read our review →
Hike Monte Verde, Natural Park, São Vicente, 3h +/- (roundtrip)
Read our review →
Sunset Hike to Lighthouse, Dona Amélia, São Vicente, 2h
Read our review →
2. Nature, History of FOGO and relaxation at the natural pool of Salinas
Read our review →
Full-day Island Tour & Visit to Cova de Paúl Volcano Crater
Read our review →
Full-Day Island Tour in Santo Antão with Lunch Included
Read our review →
