Cape Verde is mostly known for its beaches. Santo Ant\u00e3o is not that island. It is the green, vertical, wet one, and it is where people come to walk. We know this well, because we live halfway down the Paul Valley, in Eito, and the most famous hike on the island finishes more or less at our door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So this is not a guide written from a desk. It is written from the trail. Below are the walks worth your legs, how hard they really are, when to come, and how to reach the start without wasting a day figuring it out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Santo Ant\u00e3o sits at the northern end of Cape Verde, a one-hour ferry from S\u00e3o Vicente. It is the second largest island in the country and about as far as you can get from the flat, sandy resorts of Sal and Boa Vista. The interior is folded into deep ravines, terraced from floor to ridge, and stitched together by old cobbled paths that people built by hand to move between villages and fields.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The result is a small island with a lot of walking in it. You can do a soft two-hour stroll through the terraces and a leg-punishing ridge climb within a few kilometres of each other. What ties it together is that the trails are lived-in. You pass sugarcane, coffee, banana plants, a grogue still, someone’s goats, and usually the person who owns them. The scenery is the reason people book the ferry. The daily life along the path is the reason they remember it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you do one walk on Santo Ant\u00e3o, do this one. It starts at the rim of the Cova crater, an old volcanic caldera at around 1,200 metres that farmers now use as a field, and it descends the full length of the Paul Valley to the coastal town of Vila das Pombas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You reach the start by road. Most people take an aluguer up the old mountain road, stand on the crater rim, often above the cloud, and look down into the entire valley with the ocean at the far end. Then you walk down. The path is stone, laid by hand, zig-zagging off the crater wall before it settles into the valley proper. From there it drops past Cabo da Ribeira, Ch\u00e3 de Manuel Santos, and through Eito on the way to the sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That last detail is the reason we like guests to start here. The trail comes through our village. You can be dropped at Cova in the morning, walk down through the valley, and finish the day in a room a few minutes from where the path passes. No transfer back, no logistics. You arrive on foot at the place you are already sleeping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Honest numbers: it is roughly 12 to 15 kilometres and takes four to six hours at a real pace, less if you move fast and stop for nothing. It is downhill almost the whole way, which sounds easy and is not. Hours of descent on cobblestones is hard on the knees, so bring trekking poles if your knees have opinions. There is some exposure on the upper section but nothing technical. If your knees would rather climb than descend, you can walk it in reverse and let a car meet you at the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other walk everyone talks about is on the north coast, and it is a completely different feeling. From the town of Ponta do Sol a narrow paved path is cut into the cliff, high above the Atlantic, and runs to the village of Fontainhas, which clings to a spur between two ravines and looks like it was drawn rather than built. Strong walkers continue past Corvo and on toward Cruzinha.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This one is about the drop-off on your left, not the climb. It is moderate rather than hard, but the path is exposed and shade and water are scarce, so go early and carry your own. It is on the far side of the island from us, so it works best as its own day with a transfer to the north coast. We can point you to the aluguer times or arrange a lift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If the descent from Cova only makes you want to go higher, the valley gives you room. From Eito a path climbs toward Pico da Cruz, at 1,585 metres one of the high points above the valley. It crosses the river, ducks into a gorge, and then simply goes up, past a few houses and terraces, with the views getting more absurd the higher you get. Fit walkers can push all the way to the top and drop back down another way; most people turn around when their legs vote to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Be honest with yourself here. The up-valley routes are steeper, less obvious at the junctions, and the signage is thin to non-existent. This is the terrain where a local guide earns their fee twice over, once for the navigation and once for what they tell you along the way. Ask us and we will set it up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not every day has to end with wrecked knees. Some of the best hours in the valley are the slow ones. From the house you can wander up the valley floor along the terraces, past the coffee and cane, through hamlets like Cabo da Ribeira and Passagem, stop where someone is distilling grogue, and turn back when you feel like it. No guide, no plan, an hour or two, and you see the valley at the pace it was built for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These walks are also the ones that make the difference between visiting Paul Valley and staying in it. You are not commuting to a trailhead. You step outside and you are already there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The driest, most stable stretch is roughly November to June. Clear mornings, firm paths, comfortable temperatures for walking. This is also when most visitors come, so the trails are a little busier, though “busy” on Santo Ant\u00e3o still means you can walk for an hour and see three people and a donkey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
August and September are the wet months. Rain makes the stone paths slick and can turn a junction into a judgment call, but it also brings the valley to its greenest and quietest. If you come then, plan around the weather rather than through it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whatever the month, mornings are your friend. The Cova rim and the high ground often sit under cloud by midday, so the earlier you start, the more you actually see. We serve breakfast early for exactly this reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Getting to Santo Ant\u00e3o is part of the walk. There are no flights to the island. You fly into S\u00e3o Vicente, spend a night in Mindelo if the timing calls for it, and take the one-hour ferry to Porto Novo. From the port, a shared aluguer climbs the old cobbled Corda road across the spine of the island, and that drive alone is worth the ticket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From a house in the middle of the valley, the hard part of the logistics is already done. Several walks start at the door, and for the ones that don’t, we sort the ride to the start so you spend your day walking, not waiting. When you are ready to plan the dates, it is worth a one-hour ferry and a ride up the mountain road<\/a> for what waits on the other side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Keep it simple. Shoes with real grip, because the cobbles get slippery, especially in mist or after rain. Sun protection and more water than you think, because shade and refill points are scarce. A layer, because it is cool at the crater and hot at the coast on the same walk. Trekking poles if you are doing the long descent. That is most of it. This is hand-built trail through farmland, not an expedition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, with common sense. Nothing here is technical climbing. The real risks are ordinary ones: exposure on some sections, few places to top up water, weather that shifts fast at altitude, and paths that are not always signed. Start early, tell someone where you are going, don’t push a summit into bad light, and take a guide for the routes where the navigation matters. Do that and Santo Ant\u00e3o is one of the most rewarding places to walk in the Atlantic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most people who come to hike Santo Ant\u00e3o make the same discovery: the valley is not a day trip, it is the reason to stay. Basing yourself inside Paul Valley instead of on the coast means you wake up where the trails are, walk from the door, and come back to the same place instead of a bus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That is why we built Kasa d’Vizin the way we did, as the neighbour’s house in Eito rather than a hotel on the edge of it. Four rooms, our own table at Mesa d’Vizin<\/a> for when your legs are done, and the valley starting where the doorstep ends. If that is the trip you want, have a look at the rooms<\/a>, check which nights are open<\/a>, and write to us<\/a> with what you have in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Roughly November to June for the driest, most reliable conditions. August and September are wetter and greener but slippery underfoot. Start early any month, because the high ground clouds over by midday.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Not for the main Cova-to-Paul descent, which is easy to follow. Yes, worth it for the steeper up-valley routes and anywhere the junctions get vague. Hiring locally also keeps money in the valley.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n About 12 to 15 kilometres, four to six hours, almost all downhill on stone. Not technical, but hard on the knees. Poles help.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ferry from Mindelo on S\u00e3o Vicente to Porto Novo, then a shared aluguer up the mountain road. From a house in Eito, several walks start at the door.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Cape Verde is mostly known for its beaches. Santo Ant\u00e3o is not that island. It is the green, vertical, wet one, and it is where people come to walk. We know this well, because we live halfway down the Paul Valley, in Eito, and the most famous hike on the island finishes more or less […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2967,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hiking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2963"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2966,"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2963\/revisions\/2966"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kasadvizin.com\/nl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What to bring<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Is it safe?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Where to base yourself<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Frequently asked questions<\/h2>\n\n\n
When is the best time to hike in Santo Ant\u00e3o?<\/h3>\n
Do you need a guide?<\/h3>\n
How hard is the Cova to Paul hike?<\/h3>\n
How do you reach the trailheads?<\/h3>\n