Travelling is my biggest passion. I try to spend every day of my vacation time (unfortunately, limited to 26 days a year) travelling. I travel mostly with my family and sometimes solo. I love going to remote places and always plan visiting as many WH sites as possible. Although sometimes they are not rewarding, in most cases visiting WHS gives me much better understanding of the region I visit.

I find this site very helpful in planning my trips to more difficult WHS and want to share my reviews especially on rarely visited ones.

From the perspective of Praia, the capital of Cape Verde, the town of Tarrafal is located exactly on the opposite side of the island of Santiago. Although the distance is only 60 kilometers, it can take as long as 1.5h by car and even up to 3h by minibus, called here aluguer. We chose the latter, adding to the adventure. You have to ask the driver to stop near the camp, which is in the outskirts of the town of Tarrafal, near the main road.

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It seems Cape Verde is not a very popular country in this community. It is not surprising since there is only one World Heritage Site and chances for the inscription of the second one (Tarrafal) are vague. But if you do not follow typical beach vacation on Sal or Boa Vista, there is a lot to see and there is a surprising variety of landscapes in this small country. 

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The island of Fogo is quite small, but it has the highest peak of Cape Verde, active volcano Pico de Fogo. The volcano and its surroundings (with natural boundaries of its caldera) are protected as a national park. Although the landscape is moonscape-like and, at least at the first glance, not friendly, due to mild climate and rich soil people always lived in the caldera, planting coffee and grapewine. They even developed original rounded houses, made from volcanic materials and called funco. Unfortunately, happy life in the caldera is frequently interrupted by eruptions of smaller peak of Fogo (Pico Pequeno). The last one took place in 2014 and lasted for four months. It was very slow so people had time to leave the village taking everything valuable. Although almost all buildings were covered with lava and destroyed, immediately after the eruption the inhabitants came back and started constructing new houses, literally “level up”, on top of the remnants of old ones. The landscape of the village and surroundings is really outstanding and one of the most memorable ones in Cape Verde. It is also one of the best examples of human adaptation to difficult conditions near volcanoes. If caboverdian government emphasizes this cultural aspect, I would cheer them on success of the nomination as a WHS.

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Although Fogo is one of the most interesting islands of Cape Verde, not many tourist go there. Majority of those who choose to visit Fogo, stay in its capital, Sao Filipe. Sao Filipe is a small town, located on the high cliff, so the ocean is visible from practically everywhere. The town is poorer than caboverdian average and preserved most of its colonial style. There are even no asphalted roads, only cobblestone ones, which makes the town more “authentic” than, say, popular and modernized Mindelo. Despite that, it may be difficult to document outstanding universal value of this place, especially taking into account that the local government does not care of historic integrity of the town – so there are new, modern looking buildings next to historical ones.

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Cape Verde has a very misleading country name. It was named after the closest point in continental Africa (Green Cape), whereas the country itself is not verde (green) but rather desert-like. There is, however, one exception, which is the island of Santo Antao. The island is the westernmost in the archipelago and takes the most precipitation. There are high mountains dividing the island in two parts, where souhteastern part is barely green, while in the northwest there are regular forests and lots of plants. 

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