Every Echoes of Africa guide and essay filed under Cape Verde: entry rules, safety, money, transport, packing, food, culture, festivals and heritage.
A flat arid plain on Sal runs to a low volcanic cone under a pale sky.
Travel Planning

Best Time to Visit Cape Verde

We publish no month-by-month table, because we could not source one. Here is what the year is organized around instead, island by island.
Aug 20, 2026 · 2 min read
Green peaks and terraced slopes rise into low cloud above the Paul valley on Santo Antao.
Heritage

Paul Valley: Visitor and Heritage Guide

Some experts call this the greatest center of plant biodiversity in the archipelago. It is also where the water is, which is the same story.
Aug 20, 2026 · 2 min read
Salt pans inside the crater at Pedra de Lume, with the works building and the crater rim behind.
Heritage

Pedra de Lume: Visitor and Heritage Guide

Salt pans worked inside an extinct volcano, fed by channels from the sea, on an island whose name is simply the Portuguese for salt.
Aug 20, 2026 · 1 min read
The courtyard between the barrack blocks at Tarrafal camp, with barred windows and the gate beyond.
Heritage

Tarrafal Camp: Visitor and Heritage Guide

Cape Verde calls it the camp of slow death. It held prisoners from four countries of the Portuguese empire for more than thirty years.
Aug 20, 2026 · 2 min read
The marble pillar on Pillory Square at Cidade Velha, with painted houses and the fortress hill behind.
Heritage

Cidade Velha: Visitor and Heritage Guide

The first European colonial town in the tropics, a platform for the Atlantic slave trade, and where the first Creole society formed. All one place.
Aug 20, 2026 · 2 min read
People stand and walk along a street of brightly painted colonial-era houses in Cape Verde.
Destination

Cape Verde

Cidade Velha was the first European town built in the tropics and a platform for the Atlantic trade in enslaved people. Creole culture began there.
Aug 11, 2026 · 4 min read
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