Cape Verde: which island to choose? From Sal to Santo Antão

The village appears suddenly around a bend in the path: a handful of colourful houses perched on a ridge, above a terraced ravine dropping down to the ocean.

Fontainhas is a hamlet on the north coast of Santo Antão, a few kilometres from Ponta do Sol. For a long time it could only be reached on foot, and it has become the most photographed view on the island.

You get there on the cobbled path that leaves Ponta do Sol and winds along the cliff side: about an hour's walk each way, with ocean views at every turn. If you have the energy, carry on to Corvo and Cruzinha, on one of the finest coastal paths in the country.

Less famous than the Paúl valley, it's still the place that sums up Santo Antão best in a single morning's walk.

At the end of a cobbled lane, the black pebble beach of Cidade Velha is lined with the fishermen's painted boats, facing the white stone pillory that has stood on the square since the 16th century.

Founded by the Portuguese around 1462 as Ribeira Grande, it was the first European colonial town in the tropics and a hub of the Atlantic slave trade. The historic centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009, the first in Cape Verde to be listed.

Walk up Rua Banana, one of the oldest colonial streets in Africa, visit the ruins of the cathedral and the church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário, then climb to Fort São Filipe for the view over the bay. Allow half a day.

This is where you understand the country's history, its mixed heritage and the weight of slavery, better than in any museum in Praia.

Inside the caldera, everything is black, grey and ochre: frozen lava flows, vines planted in the ash, and above them the perfect cone of Pico do Fogo filling the sky.

The volcano rises to 2,829 m, the highest point in Cape Verde. Its last eruption, from November 2014 to February 2015, buried much of the villages of Portela and Bangaeira, on the floor of the Chã das Caldeiras caldera; the residents have since come back to tend their vines and rebuild.

The climb up the cone is done with a guide, starting from the caldera at around 1,700 m: three to four hours of steep ascent, then a fast descent sliding down through the ash. If you're less sporty, settle for Pico Pequeno, the 2014 crater, and a local wine tasting.

It's the most spectacular landscape in the archipelago, and one of the few inhabited calderas you can explore on foot.

Once you cross the pass, the contrast is striking: Santo Antão's southern slopes are dry and rocky, while the northern side spills over with sugar cane, banana and mango trees clinging to dizzying terraces.

The westernmost island of the archipelago, Santo Antão owes its greenery to the trade winds that hit its peaks. Its deep valleys, Paúl, Ribeira Grande and Ribeira da Torre, are linked by a network of cobbled paths that locals once used to reach the coast.

The classic hike starts at the Cova crater, an old volcano now farmed, and heads down the Paúl valley to the sea: about three to five hours, almost all downhill, with plunging views at every bend. Along the way, stop to taste grogue at a family distillery.

This is the island that breaks the image of Cape Verde as pure desert, and the best hiking destination in the country.

In Santa Maria, the morning starts on the pier: fishermen land tuna and wahoo there and cut them up on the spot, watched by the first swimmers of the day.

Once a salt workers' village and now the country's main beach resort, Santa Maria stretches along the south of Sal on a beach of golden sand several kilometres long, sheltered from the trade winds and lapped by turquoise water.

Days are spent swimming, at kitesurf and windsurf schools, diving and on boat trips, and evenings in the bars and restaurants of the pedestrian streets. You can walk around the centre in an hour.

It's the easiest base for a first beach holiday: direct flights to Sal, plenty of places to stay and tours to the rest of the island.

In Mindelo, music spills out of the bars as soon as night falls: a guitar, a cavaquinho, a voice singing morna, and the street joining in on the chorus.

A British coaling port in the 19th century, Mindelo became the cultural capital of Cape Verde and the hometown of Cesária Évora, the "barefoot diva". Morna, the melancholy music she carried around the world, has been on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage since 2019.

Wander through the colonial centre with its pastel façades, around Praça Nova and the municipal market, follow the bay to the replica of Lisbon's Belém Tower, then end the evening in a live music bar. The carnival, in February, is the most famous in the country.

It's the liveliest town in the archipelago, and the obligatory stop before the ferry to Santo Antão.

On Santa Mónica beach, you can walk for an hour without meeting anyone: golden sand as far as the eye can see, dunes inland and the Atlantic rolling in.

Boa Vista, the country's third-largest island, is almost entirely fringed with beaches. Santa Mónica, in the south-west, runs for about twenty kilometres; Chaves beach, near Sal Rei, is backed by white dunes. The island is also one of the Atlantic's major nesting sites for loggerhead turtles.

Reach the southern beaches by 4x4 or on a tour, walk, swim when the sea allows and, in summer, watch the turtles nest at night with an approved guide. Allow a day to cover the southern beaches.

This is the island for wide open spaces and peace and quiet, while Sal is livelier.

At the bottom of the crater, the water is so salty that you float effortlessly, lying back as if on a mattress, between white salt pans and the ochre slopes of the volcano.

The Pedra de Lume salt flats fill the crater of an old volcano on Sal's east coast. Their salt made the island's fortune and gave it its name (sal means salt): it was exported in the 19th and early 20th centuries, notably to Africa, and you can still see the pylons of the cableway that carried it down to the port.

You enter through a tunnel cut into the crater wall, swim in the brine pools, rinse off under the showers and finish at the little harbour of Pedra de Lume. Allow one to one and a half hours on site.

It's the most unusual experience on Sal, and an easy stop between Santa Maria and the north coast.

At Buracona, waves crash against black volcanic rock, then, in a nearby crack, the midday sun lights up a pool of almost unreal blue: the Olho Azul, the "Blue Eye".

On Sal's north-west coast, lava has formed a jagged platform of natural pools and sea caves. The Olho Azul is a cavity where light enters through an underwater opening, creating an intense blue glow when the sun is high.

Swim in the natural pool when the sea is calm, then queue at the edge of the crack to see the Blue Eye. The stop lasts about an hour and is often combined with Pedra de Lume and the lemon sharks of Shark Bay.

It's the most spectacular landscape on Sal, an otherwise flat and desert-like island.

After two hours on the road through Santiago's mountains, the bay of Tarrafal comes into view: a beach of pale sand, coconut palms, fishing boats and the calmest water on the island.

This fishing village in the north of Santiago is the favourite beach escape for people from Praia. Its name is also linked to the former Chão Bom prison camp, opened under the Portuguese dictatorship and now turned into a Museum of Resistance.

Swim, snorkel in the nearby coves, watch the fishermen come back in the late afternoon and visit the camp museum, a few kilometres away. The drive from Praia crosses the Serra Malagueta and the market town of Assomada.

It's the best beach on Santiago, and far quieter than those on Sal.

Perched on a headland above the port, the Plateau has kept its grid of streets, its colourful colonial façades and its shady pedestrian street, where you can sip a coffee and watch the capital go by.

Praia, the capital of Cape Verde on the island of Santiago, is the country's largest city. The Plateau is its historic and administrative centre, with the presidential palace, the church of Nossa Senhora da Graça and Alexandre Albuquerque square.

You can walk around the Plateau in an hour or two, head down to the noisy, colourful Sucupira market, then visit the ethnographic museum. Praia is mainly a stopover on the way to Cidade Velha and Tarrafal.

This is where you see everyday Cape Verde, far from the resorts of Sal.

A few kilometres from Sal Rei, the landscape changes completely: golden sand dunes, a few acacias, and the feeling that you've landed in a corner of the Sahara in the middle of the Atlantic.

The Viana Desert covers part of north-west Boa Vista. Its sand is carried by winds from Africa, some 500 km to the east, giving the island a Saharan look found nowhere else in the archipelago.

Explore it on foot at sunrise or sunset, or by quad bike and 4x4 on tours that often combine the dunes with the wreck of the Cabo Santa Maria, which ran aground on the north coast in 1968.

It's the landscape that sets Boa Vista apart from Sal, its more built-up neighbour.