Sal is only the airport. The archipelago is the trip.
Which boat finds the lemon sharks at Shark Bay. What a buggy across the Viana desert costs. Whether Santo Antão is worth the morning ferry out of Mindelo. Reviews of every tour you can book across the islands.
The four days a first Cape Verde trip is built on.
Salt, sharks, a deck on the Atlantic and one crossing to a greener island. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01Sal, day oneAll-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay TourSalt pans you float in, the Blue Eye at Buracona and lemon sharks in waist-deep water. One minibus, the whole island.
02The deck dayAll-Inclusive Half-Day Lounge Catamaran CruiseHalf a day on a lounge catamaran out of Santa Maria, with the swim stop the beach cannot give you.
03Across to Boa VistaShark, Turtles, Cave, Sandboarding & Tasting TourTurtles, a cave, a dune to sandboard down and a tasting at the end. Boa Vista in one long morning.
04The green islandSantiago Island Tour with Tastings and Tarrafal BeachPraia, the road north to Tarrafal and tastings on the way. Santiago is where the country actually lives.
Six islands, and the day out that makes each one.
Sal and Boa Vista are salt, sand and wind. Santiago carries the capital and the mountains behind it. São Vicente has Mindelo and the music. Santo Antão is the green ridge across the channel, and Fogo is a volcano you can still climb.
In Cape Verde the good day starts at a jetty.
The Atlantic here is warm, clear and full of things worth swimming near. Four kinds of day on the water, what it costs to board each one, and which island it leaves from.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · All-Inclusive Half-Day Lounge Catamaran Cruise
Shark BayLemon sharks circling in water that barely reaches your knees.
Turtle waterNesting beaches after dark, green turtles on the snorkel drops.
Catamaran daysShade, a swim ladder and lunch cooked on deck.
Reef tripsShort hops to the reef off Santa Maria and out of Mindelo.
All 16 days on the Atlantic →
The most booked days out in Cape Verde.
Every Cape Verde tour →More travellers take these than anything else in the islands. What each one costs, and what earns it the slot.
1
Island Experience Tour with a Certified Local Guide
Spend seven hours crossing Sal with a local guide such as Tony, Christian, Nany, or Kiki. Visit Santa Maria, Palmeira, Buracona, Pedra de Lume, Shark Bay, and Espargos, with time for salt-lake floating, lemon-shark viewing, local food, photos, and a natural-pool swim.
From · $41
Read our review →
2
All-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay Tour
from $53
3
Experience on Sal Island with native and certified guide (including sharks)
from $36
4
Blu eye, Salt lake, Lemon Sharks & Palmeira
from $35
5
Guided Snorkeling and Reef Tour
from $44
6
Complete Excursion and Flight on the Zipline Cabo Verde
from $56
7
Horse Riding in Sal Island – Cabo Verde
from $60
8
All-Inclusive Half-Day Lounge Catamaran Cruise
from $81
Sal: salt, sharks and a flat blue coast.
Everything on Sal →
Almost every flight lands here and most first trips never leave. The flooded crater at Pedra de Lume, the Blue Eye at Buracona, lemon sharks off the east coast, then Santa Maria for the evening.
Pedra de Lume, inside the crater
A collapsed volcanic cone with the sea let into it, worked for salt until the trade died. The water is dense enough to hold you flat on the surface without effort, and the cable car that carried salt over the crater wall still stands above the pans.
Buracona and the Blue Eye
A hole in the lava at Buracona fills with sea, and for an hour either side of noon the sun drops straight through it until the water reads as neon. Turn up outside that window and it is a dark pool in black rock.
A buggy across the island
Sal is gravel plain once the hotels stop, which is exactly what a two-seat buggy is for. Routes run to the wreck on the Costa da Fragata and the fishing harbour at Palmeira, and you come back the colour of the road.
Boa Vista is dune, wreck and turtle beach.
An island of blown sand with a Spanish freighter rusting on the shore of it. Jeeps and buggies cross the Viana desert to the wreck and on to Santa Monica, and from June the loggerheads come up the beaches at night.
The Cape Verde interior, by buggy.
Both sand islands are gravel, dune and lava field the moment the hotels stop. A buggy or a quad turns that into the day itself: the shipwreck, the desert crossing, a village nobody else drives to.
What a day out in Cape Verde costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. A fair share of the best days in the islands come in under the price of dinner at the hotel.
Salt lake runs, shark bay trips, city walks and the short snorkel hops out of Santa Maria and Mindelo.
Full-day island tours with lunch, catamaran half-days, jeep crossings and the Santo Antão trip by ferry.
Private buggies, dive packages and the chartered days on the water.
- 12-Hour Buggy Desert Adventurefrom $170
- 2Full day Sailing yacht – Beautiful day on the Atlantic Oceanfrom $150
- 34-Hour Buggy Island Tourfrom $305
Mindelo sings, and the turtles are ten minutes out.
The music capital of the islands is a colonial harbour town where Saturday starts late and finishes later. Boats run out from the bay to snorkel with green turtles, and Monte Verde stands over the whole island with the wind coming across it.
Every São Vicente day out →
Three things that only happen in Cape Verde.
Warm water and boat trips exist all down this coast. Standing in a shallow bay while lemon sharks pass, floating in a crater full of brine and a Saharan desert with a shipwreck at the end of it do not.
Shark Bay
On the east side of Sal a shallow bay fills on the tide and juvenile lemon sharks come in to feed in water that barely covers your knees. Guides walk small groups out at the right hour and the sharks pass between the legs standing there. They are metre-long juveniles with no interest in people, and the whole thing lasts about as long as the tide allows.
- 1All-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,033 reviews
- 2Shark Bay Experience from Santa Maria★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 345 reviews
- 3Santa Maria, Sal: All inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 311 reviews
A crater full of salt
The village of Pedra de Lume sits inside a collapsed volcanic cone, and the floor of it was flooded to work the salt. The brine is heavy enough to hold you on the surface without swimming. A tunnel cut through the crater wall in the 1800s is still the way in, and the cable-car towers that ran the salt down to the harbour are still standing over the pans.
- 1All-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,033 reviews
- 2Blu eye, Salt lake, Lemon Sharks & Palmeira★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,003 reviews
- 3Santa Maria, Sal: All inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 311 reviews
Deserto de Viana
A field of pale sand blown across from the Sahara sits in the middle of Boa Vista, dune after dune with nothing growing on it. Jeeps cross it on the way to the Cabo Santa Maria, a cargo ship that ran aground on the north shore in 1968 and has been coming apart in the surf ever since.
- 1Boa Vista Jeep Expedition: Shipwreck & Viana Desert (4-Hour)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 134 reviews
- 2Boa Vista Quad Tour: Shipwreck & Viana Desert (2-Hour)★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 121 reviews
- 3Boa Vista Island: 4-Hour Rabil, Viana Desert & Shipwreck Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 31 reviews
Four Cape Verde bookings that will not wait.
Most of the archipelago can be arranged the night before over a beer in Santa Maria. These four cannot. They run on nesting seasons, a migration, a ferry timetable and a mountain that has to be started before the heat.
- 01Sea Turtle Watching Experience on Sal IslandLoggerheads nest roughly June to October. Outside those months there is nothing on the beach to see, and inside them the licensed groups are small and fill early.
- 02Whale Watching Trip with MotoryachtHumpbacks pass Boa Vista on their way north, roughly February to May. The boats only run while the whales are there.
- 03Santo Antão Day Trip with Local GuideSanto Antão has no airport. Everything starts with the Mindelo ferry, which sails to a fixed timetable and decides how long your day on the island can be.
- 04Pico do Fogo Volcano Summit HikeThe summit walk leaves at first light from inside the caldera and goes with a guide. It has to be fixed around the flight to Fogo, not the other way round.
Cape Verde days for when the boats stay in.
The trade wind blows here most of the year and hardest between December and April. It is why the kite schools exist, and it is also why a small boat sometimes stays tied up. The islands have an answer inland: the old capital under its fort, a lunch cooked by somebody’s family, a grogue still, a market morning in Praia.
By kind of day: water, dune, ridge or table
How a first run across Cape Verde is usually strung together.
The newest Cape Verde tour reviews.
The rest of the new ones →
Beaches, Villages and Monte Verde, São Vicente Excludes City
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Shore Excursion: 3-Hour Guided Historic Tour of Praia & Cidade Velha
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Serra Malagueta Natural Park: Hike to Gongon Valley & Lunch
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Trekking Cova de Paúl Volcano Crater – Ribeira de Paúl
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Full-day Island Tour & Visit to Cova de Paúl Volcano Crater
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Guided City tour Praia with Cidade Velha (World Heritage)
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3-Hour Shark Bay and Salt Lakes in Sal Island Guided Tour
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