Maio is the easternmost of the Sotavento islands (“under the wind”) of Cape Verde and besides Sal the oldest island of the archipelago. Its 269 km² are quite flat except for some old volcanic mountains in the interior of which Monte Penoso (436 m) is the highest. The island is dry, barren, hostile, and the […]
Schlagwort: Landschaft
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 […]
Espargos
Espargos is a small, lovely desert town in the centre of Sal, right at the International Airport. It is the official capital of the island but of no further interest for tourists – if it wasn´t for the impressive volcanic desert landscape surrounding it. To fully enjoy this stunning scenery, one must walk up 107 […]
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 […]
Assomada
Assomada lies at 550 m elevation on a plateau in the centre of the island of Santiago amidst a picturesque mountain scenery. Therefore, the climate is cooler and thus more pleasant than in muggy Praia, and the surrounding landscape is characterized by farmland as well as the nearby mountains of Serra Malagueta in the background. […]
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 […]
Chobe National Park
Chobe River floats through northern Botswana and marks the border to Zambezi Region (hist.: Caprivi Strip) in Namibia as well as with Zambia before flowing into Zambezi River at the quadripoint of Botswana, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe at Kazungula. It´s born in the highland of Angola under the name Cuando, and from there it meanders […]
Kafue National Park
Kafue National Park is a protected area of many superlatives. With a size of 22.480 km2, it is not only the largest National Park in the country but also one of the largest worldwide and more than half the size of Switzerland. Furthermore, it is the first National Park in Zambia, founded in 1950, but […]
Barotseland & Zambezi floodplains – Barotseland & die Sambesi-Flutebene
The floodplains along Zambezi River in Zambia’s west are vast plains that get flooded for a few months every rainy season between April and June or July. Clusters of trees mark slightly higher ground, and those are the places the Lozi people use to build their small settlements. It is a remarkable fact that flooding […]