Introduction

The islands of the Cape Verde archipelago are windy, hilly and dry - almost lunar - and fairly sleepy. But there's beauty in them thar parched hills. And some of the islands are actually lush. There's good diving and hiking, lively nightlife and plenty of quiet corners to hide away in.

Islanders mix up African, Portuguese, Mediterranean and Latin influences and come out with a flavour that's distinctly 'Cabo'. Package tourism has gained a foothold, but Cape Verde is still independent and unspoiled, the perfect place to pretend that your real life doesn't exist.

When to Go

The best time to visit Cape Verde is from August to October, when the weather is pleasantly warm, though the winds are pretty stiff year round, so bring a windcheater. The rest of the year is much cooler.

Events

Cape Verde has one of Africa's most vibrant Carnival celebrations. It's the country's major party, with street parades in February in Praia and Mindelo. On São Tiago and Fogo, Tabanka is celebrated in May and June and marked by music and abstinence. Each island also has its own festival, with the party going on for about a week.

Luxury is not a conspicuous feature of Cape Verdean accommodation or dining. You could spend US$100 a day and nearly max out what's on offer, though islandhopping, scuba diving and souvenir hunting will all rachet up your budget. Moderate travel will run closer to US$50 a day, though you can get by for less if you pick your accommodation with care and do some self-catering. Budget travellers can squeak by for well under US$50 a day if they stick to inexpensive resthouses and restaurants.

Banks in the major towns can change money and travellers' cheques. Some hotels in Praia will also change US dollars into escudos. There's no bank at the Praia airport, so be sure to unload your excess escudos in town before you leave.

Expect to tip 10% in better restaurants, but check the bill carefully to be sure a service charge hasn't already been added.

This flat desert island, home to the international airport, is a package-tour destination for Europeans with large wallets and a yen for the tropics without local involvement. The village of Santa Maria caters to the packagers; it's 18km (11mi) from the main village of Espargos. Independent travellers should head for Espargos, where you'll have no difficulty finding a pensão (pension) or a restaurant. There are daily flights between Sal and Praia; there are also boats running between the islands that pick up passengers at Sal about twice a week.

São Tiago is the main island and home to the capital, Praia. The city isn't the most beautiful of the archipelago's two cities (this distinction belongs to Mindelo), but it's a pleasant place, with its centre perched on a rocky plateau known as Platô. This central area is surrounded by urban sprawl in three directions. The city's two beaches, Praia Mar and Quebra-Canela, are west of the centre.

For a half-day trip out of Praia, go to the Cidade Velha (Old City), the first town built by the Portuguese on the islands. There are great views of the village on the climb up to Fort Real de São Felipe. The Old City is about 10km (6mi) west of Praia. Some 20km (12mi) inland from Praia, the village of São Domingos is the closest green agricultural valley to the capital. There are one or two shops selling handicrafts. At the northern end of São Tiago is the island's second largest settlement, Tarrafal, which is famous for its beaches. It can be reached by chartered bus from Praia.

São Vicente is Cape Verde's second most important island. It's got the liveliest city in the islands, Mindelo. The ships passing through (Mindelo's port is the deepest in Cape Verde) might have something to do with the higher energy level. Certainly the bars and nightclubs are more numerous and the restaurants a cut above those in Praia. The picturesque colonial houses are mostly two-storey affairs with balconies and shuttered windows. There are several flights a day to and from Sal and Praia; there's also a ferry.

Brava is the smallest of the inhabited islands and only three hours west of Fogo by ferry. It's mountainous and one of the most scenic islands, offering some of the best hiking opportunities in Cape Verde.

Santo Antão, just north of São Vicente, is one of the most beautiful islands and well worth a visit. The greenest island in the archipelago, it's one of the few places where you'll see lots of trees. None of the towns on the island is particularly interesting, but what's special is the hilly and relatively lush interior; hikers will love it. There are flights between Santo Antão and Mindelo (on São Vicente) three times a week; you can connect at Mindelo with flights to Praia. There's also a ferry between the island and Mindelo; the trip takes about an hour each way, but even on this short stretch the seas can be pretty rough.

Activities

Cape Verde's many hilly islands offer good hiking. One of the best places for a short trek is the hilly green interior of Santo Antão Island. The main hike is up Ribeira Grande Mountain, some 10km (6mi) south of the town of Ribeira Grande, which is on the north-eastern coast. Getting to the top and back takes most of a day. Brava and São Vicente also have some excellent hikes.

History

The history of Cape Verde is dominated by three overriding facts: there were no people of any sort on the islands when the Portuguese first arrived; the environment has become increasingly fragile over the centuries, largely due to the impact of people and overgrazing; and it's farther from the African mainland and closer to the Americas than any other African country. It's hardly surprising, therefore, that Cape Verde developed along lines somewhat different from the rest of Africa.

When Portuguese mariners first landed in Cape Verde in 1456, the islands were barren of people but not of vegetation. Seeing the islands today, you find it hard to imagine that they were once sufficiently verde (green) to entice the Portuguese to return six years later to the island of São Tiago to found Ribeira Grande (now Cidade Velha). The Portuguese soon brought slaves from the West African coast to do the hard labour. The islands also became a convenient base for ships transporting slaves to Europe and the Americas.

The islands' prosperity brought them unwanted attention in the form of a sacking at the hands of England's Sir Francis Drake in 1586. Cape Verde remained in Portuguese hands and continued to prosper, but in 1747 the islands were hit with the first of the many droughts that have plagued them ever since. The situation was made worse by deforestation and overgrazing, which destroyed the ground vegetation that provided moisture. Three major droughts in the 18th and 19th centuries resulted in well over 100,000 people starving to death. The Portuguese government sent almost no relief during any of the droughts. The 19th-century decline of the lucrative slave trade was another blow to the country's economy. Cape Verde's colonial heyday was over.

It was then, in 1832, that Charles Darwin passed by, finding dry and barren islands. It was also around this time that Cape Verdeans started emigrating to New England. This was a popular destination because of the whales that abounded in the waters around Cape Verde, and as early as 1810 whaling ships from Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the US recruited crews from the islands of Brava and Fogo.

At the end of the 19th century, with the advent of the ocean liner, the islands' position astride Atlantic shipping lanes made Cape Verde an ideal locale for resupplying ships with fuel (imported coal), water and livestock. Still, the droughts continued and the Portuguese government did nothing. Many more thousands died of starvation during the first half of the 20th century.

Although the Cape Verdeans were treated badly by their colonial masters, they fared slightly better than Africans in other Portuguese colonies because of their lighter skin. A small minority received an education; Cape Verde was the first Portuguese colony to have a school for higher education. By the time of independence, a quarter of the population could read, compared to 5% in Portuguese Guinea (now Guinea-Bissau).

This largesse ultimately backfired on the Portuguese, however, as literate Cape Verdeans became aware of the pressures for independence building on the mainland and started a joint movement for independence with the natives of Guinea-Bissau. But the Portuguese dictator Salazar wasn't about to give up his colonies as easily as the British and French had given up theirs. Consequently, from the early 1960s, the people of Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau fought one of the longest African liberation wars.

In 1975, Cape Verde finally gained independence from Portugal. And still the droughts continued, one lasting nearly 20 years. Despite kinder weather and doubled crop yields in the mid to late 1980s, an extreme and lengthy drought in the 1990s necessitated emergency food aid from abroad. In 1991 the first-ever multiparty elections were held, and the newly formed party Movimento para a Democracia (MPD) won 70% of the vote and formed a new government under the leadership of Dr Carlos Veiga, prime minister, and António Monteiro, president. Both were returned in elections the following year, the first held under the country's new constitution.

There were major setbacks in the 1990s - the slow economic progress in the wake of the drought led to a splintering of the MPD, and one defector established a rival party. However, the MPD prevailed in parliamentary elections in 1995. Crippling drought wiped out over 80% of the islands' grain crops in 1997. The following year, Prime Minister Veiga survived a plane crash in which one of his bodyguards was killed.

Recent presidential and parliamentary elections have seen a new prime minister and president voted in, with the power base once again shifting back to the left. The former ruling African Independence Party, the PAICV, has resumed power.

Culture

The vestiges of Portuguese culture are much more evident than those of African culture, although this is less true on São Tiago Island, which has a significant number of people of African ancestry. Most people in Cape Verde are creole; about a quarter are of African descent.

Portuguese is the official language. People also speak Crioulo, an Africanised Creole Portuguese. For its tiny size, Cape Verde has produced a wealth of literature. The works written prior to independence focused on liberation and were mainly in Crioulo. Postindependence, the themes expanded to include the mass emigration from the islands by the 'Americanos' (those Cape Verdeans who've gone to the Americas) and racial discrimination. Some writers, such as Kaoberdiano Dambara, continue to write in Crioulo, while others, such as Onésimo Silveira, write in Portuguese, the dominant literary tongue.

Cape Verde is home to a variety of musical styles. One of the most popular is the foot-stomping funana, a dance beat popular in Praia and other cities and towns; morna, the national songform, typically slow, moody and in a minor key; and coladeira, a fast-moving, fluffy style of dance music. The country's best-known musician is Cesaria Evora, the 'barefoot diva', who sings in the traditional Cabo styles.

Cape Verdean food is basically Portuguese, but some dishes are unique to the islands. One of the most unusual and delicious is pastel com diablo dentro (pastry with the devil inside) - a mix of fresh tuna, onions and tomatoes, wrapped in a pastry blended from boiled potatoes and corn flour, deep fried and served hot. Soups are also popular. One of the most common is coldo de peixe (fish stew), which is loaded with vegetables and spices and thickened with manioc flour. Other specialities include bananas enroladas (bananas wrapped in pastry and deep fried) and manga de conserva (an unsweetened chutney-like concoction).

About 80% of the people are Roman Catholic. At the time of independence in 1975, the Church was the single largest landowner in the country. Subsequent land reform has reduced these holdings, but the Church remains powerful in the country.

Environment

The Cape Verde islands are in the Atlantic Ocean, 620km (385mi) west of West Africa's coast at Mauritania. There are 10 major islands (9 of them inhabited) and 5 islets, all of volcanic origin and grouped into the Barlavento (Windward) group (Santo Antão, São Vicente, Santa Luzia, Ilheu Branco, Ilheu Raso, São Nicolau, Sal and Boa Vista) to the north and the Sotavento (Leeward) group (Maio, São Tiago, Fogo and Brava) to the south.

The interior of the main island, São Tiago, is mountainous, and Fogo has the islands' highest peak, Mt Fogo (2840m/9320ft). Fogo was rocked by a volcanic eruption in 1995; there have been seven such eruptions since 1760. Many of the islands are arid and hilly, and cultivation of the hillsides has caused widespread soil erosion. Santo Antão has the highest rainfall and tends to be much greener than the other islands.

Common plants in the islands include rhododendrons, the fire tree, dragon tree, marmulano, corn plant and the Florida Beauty dracaena.

Among the islands' most colourful fauna are its coral and fish, especially in the waters around Sal, where you'll see parrot fish, barracuda and moray eels. You might also spot blue and humpback whales, the narrow-snouted dolphin, harbour porpoise and loggerhead, green and hawksbill turtles. The Raza Island lark, Cape Verde petrel, brown booby, frigatebird, tropicbird and Cape Verde warbler are among the birds winging around the archipelago. Creepy crawlies include the Cape Verde skink and the giant Cape Verde gecko.

Cape Verde has the coolest temperatures of any country in West Africa. Daily highs range from 20°C (68°F) to around 29°C (84°F) from August to October, when there can also be rainstorms. Due to ocean currents, the sea is also considerably chillier than along the West African coast.

Getting There & Away

Flying is the only realistic option for getting to and from Cape Verde. There are infrequent sea services, but they'll probably end up costing as much as a plane ticket. There are regular flights from Lisbon and less frequent flights from other European centres.

Getting Around

There's a network of expensive internal flights between the islands; between Praia, Mindelo and Sal there are flights at least once daily.

Travel on the islands is by bus or truck. Taxis are generally very expensive and there aren't many of them. You can rent cars on São Tiago, Fogo, São Vicente and Sal. You'll need an international driver's licence; driving is on the right.