Pedra de Lume

Pedra de Lume is a small settlement on Sal´s northeast coast that has grown around a tiny port. After long years of only being a stopover for turtle hunters, the interest in the island began to rose when Manuel António Martins started the exploitation of the salt ponds in the nearby crater in 1796. Water […]

Santa Maria

Santa Maria is truly a non-place, a place that was not meant to be, an absurd place living only through and because of the people who are going to leave that place within a matter of ten or fourteen days, which gives it an atmosphere of elusive briefness. It once had been a small fishing […]

Serra Malagueta

Serra Malagueta (Chili/Pepper Mountains) is a mountain range located in the north of Santiago, and together with the one around Pico da Antónia (1394 m), the highest peak on the island, it is an important rain catcher. Because of its mountainous interior, the biggest island of the archipelago with the most inhabitants receives more rain […]

Cidade Velha

In 1462, Antonio da Noli, an Italian seafarer exploring the Atlantic Ocean for the Portuguese, built a settlement at the exit auf Ribeira Grande, a beautiful valley at the south coast of the island of Santiago. This is the beginning of human history on the archipelago as the settlement started to flourish, being granted the […]

Arboretum Raponda Walker (Foret de Mondah)

We spent the last days of our journey through Gabon in Libreville, but we had planned one last excursion. This should lead us to the Foret de Mondah, a forest at the northern tip of the Libreville peninsula. Beyond that peninsula, there is already Equatorial Guinea. Parts of the Mondah forest had been cleared in […]

Libreville – No way out

When you get off the plane as a northern or middle European in Libreville, it is like walking against a wall. It is the extreme humidity that hits you like a weight packed upon your chest. At least I felt so when we arrived at Libreville at half past seven in the evening, after a […]