Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Príncipe Island with palm trees
Out of Africa … Príncipe Island is 140 miles of the coast of Gabon. Photograph: Henrique Seruca
Out of Africa … Príncipe Island is 140 miles of the coast of Gabon. Photograph: Henrique Seruca

São Tomé & Príncipe: a travel adventure that's great, green and diverse

This article is more than 6 years old

A remote, eco-friendly trip reveals a plantation house that’s now a hotel on the smaller of these two islands off the west Africa coast. Hopes are high it will bring jobs and highlight the captivating wildlife

Nelito, the boatman, took one look at the rocks and the swell smashing over them and shook his head. A clutch of tropical birds looped overhead, their long white tail streamers dancing in the wind. Ahead of us a cliff with a skirt of steep jungle ended in a maelstrom of rock and surf. Landing looked a horrible prospect. We motored around the coast a little and came to a quieter place. Nelito made a face: “You can try.”

Principe map

I dived overboard, my camera in a drybag on my back. Marina, my expedition companion, came with me. We had no idea what to expect, having deliberately chosen to visit the most remote and unvisited part of the island. Príncipe still retains the atmosphere of an undiscovered place, which it was until Portuguese mariners arrived in about 1470. And, although we had come from a small beach resort in the north of the island, this southern shore remains uninhabited until today.

Getting ashore was tough: big swells surged and I was swept through a gap between boulders. When I finally escaped the sea, I was amazed to be in one piece. Marina, scrambling ashore, looked equally relieved.

A deserted beach on Príncipe Photograph: Maique Madeira/maiquemadeira.com

Ahead of us was a steep, crumbling slope of slippery rotten vegetation and loose boulders. It was only when we were about 30 metres up that I began to notice the birds. They were watching us. There were several little finches perched on branches not two metres away, and a golden-winged weaver noisily clattering about on a palm leaf. I could have fed them all by hand. Then a bat came and did a few sweeps around our heads.

Marina touched my arm and pointed. “Look! None of them is afraid.” There was a kingfisher silently examining us from a branch a few feet away. And another. And it was true: none of these creatures showed the slightest fear. I suddenly had the most extraordinary surge of excitement and adrenaline. It was like the world was new and we had come stumbling from a time machine and discovered it.

Marina watches the birds approach on Príncipe’s coast. Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

Before I visited São Tomé and Príncipe, a two-island African nation 140 miles off the coast of Gabon, I told everyone where I was going. Just 13,000 tourists a year visit and only one person knew where it was, a naturalist, who expressed extreme envy. “They have more endemic species per square mile than anywhere on Earth. It’s the African Galápagos,” he said.

I did my homework. These two volcanic islands had never been part of the mainland, nor had they been inhabited until the Portuguese arrived. Subsequently São Tomé, which is about 30 miles by 20, proved a little easier to colonise with plantations and slaves. Coffee would grow, and cacao thrived (the islands were once the world’s largest producers of cacao). Almost a century ago, Principe was where British astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington first demonstrated Einstein’s theory of general relativity, during a 1919 solar eclipse.

Photograph: Rui Camilo

Even now, you have to fly in to São Tomé and then on to its smaller partner. The entire island of Príncipe, with its steep mountains covered in thick jungle, is a Unesco biosphere. Just nine plantations were started on the island and, as there were no villages or towns outside the tiny port of Santo António, they became the centres of population.

Everything revolved around the plantations. Each had a big house for the manager, opposite some simple quarters for workers. Between them would be a few drying sheds and storage rooms. Eventually the slave workforce became bonded labour, often recruited from Cape Verde. Otherwise life did not change much for 500 years, not until 1974, when, quite abruptly as far as Príncipe was concerned, the Portuguese empire collapsed. After that the plantations slowly declined into quiet villages, occupied mostly by people surviving by subsistence agriculture.

Dining balcony at Roça Sundy

It was the conversion of one of those large plantation houses into a new hotel that had brought me to the island. Roça Sundy is the brainchild of South African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth, famous for being the first African to travel to space. It’s his second venture after Bom Bom, a lovely small beach resort on the northern tip of the island, where I was staying. A third luxury property, Praia Sundy, opens in December.

Shuttleworth has seen the potential of Príncipe, and also its desperate need for development, but development of a kind that doesn’t threaten its unique selling point: the pristine environment. Working with the government, he has invested millions in infrastructure and hopes to attract visitors who are interested more in people and wildlife than in lazing on beaches. The emphasis is on contributing to the community; local staff are trained on site and guests are encouraged to visit local families or help on conservation projects. Though the rooms at Roça Sundy were not quite ready when I visited just before the June opening, they were clearly going to be spacious, many with lovely balconies. The entire village seemed to be engaged in painting and decorating, with a huge amount of enthusiasm and expectation – 21-year-old Alexander could not believe his luck at finding work.

Alexander at Roça Sundy plantation house with one of his cocktails. Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

“They have taught me English and how to make cocktails,” he told me, before insisting I try his own invention, called jaja. “It’s a blend of whisky, jackfruit and lemon.” It was delicious.

From a nearby room came the hum of an English class under way – I could almost feel the determination to succeed. At least I was able to sample the cooking: familiar dishes like smoked fish and chicken curry, but always with bizarre local twists – strange leaves in the salad, sudden, compelling bursts of unknown flavours.

A bedroom at Roça Sundy Photograph: Maique Madeira/maiquemadeira.com

There’s no doubt that many of Príncipe’s 5,000 inhabitants are poor by most standards, but as I discovered, they don’t really see it that way. “How can you be poor here?” said Yodi, a local guide who was taking me on a hike to a waterfall with the unusual name of Vagina Falls. (I was getting used to everything being a little bizarre on Príncipe.) “There are so many mangoes, breadfruit and bananas – you don’t need to work to grow them; you just pick them.”

He reached out and grabbed an odd triangular scarlet fruit, and presented it to me. “Try this. We call it mangongo.”

The taste was one of the strangest I’ve ever encountered: sweet at first, followed by a liquorice-type tingling that deepened into something savoury. Our trek had turned into a gourmet jungle-food tasting session in which nothing was familiar. The waterfall proved rather strange too: at the base was a pool of cool, clear water; at the top a plume of spray through which flocks of birds were diving, taking sips of water. “Spinetails,” said Yodi. In fact, they were São Tomé spinetails, one of around 25 birds found only here.

Houses on Príncipe Island

You could add to that dozens of fish, amphibians, snakes and bats. New species turn up regularly – the Príncipe shrew in 2015, the São Tomé cobra in 2017 – while several unique fish spotted by a National Geographic expedition in 2006 are still waiting to be caught and categorised. The tag African Galápagos does not seem inappropriate, although a little unfair on São Tomé and Príncipe, as they are about an eighth of the area, far less studied and currently have almost the same number of known endemics.

Returning to the nearest plantation, we went to visit Zinha, a lady whose house doubles as a restaurant, Vida Custa é Feliz, which translates roughly as “life is hard and happy”. With Zinha I began to realise how the extraordinary local flora had shaped the island diet. “This is azagão,” she said, serving a dish that looked like meat and beans in a rich sauce. “It uses over 100 different plants.”

Zinha, owner of the restaurant Vida Custa é Feliz – Life is Hard and Happy. Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

Other tastes came fast and furious; some familiar, like fried fish, rice and manioc, others downright weird – ìzaguente, for example, made from fermented rotten fruit, a dish that Yodi wolfed down with gusto. To drink there was micôco, which Zinha assured me with a straight face was “very good for the penis”.

Beyond the food and wildlife, the great pleasure of Príncipe was to walk the quiet lanes, chatting to anyone I met. On Paciência plantation I bumped into Leandro, who had come from Cape Verde as a bonded labourer in 1958 and was now scraping a living making baskets.

The plantation community here was making big efforts to create jobs, running a large market garden and starting to produce a range of essential oils, spices and preserves, as well as the traditional cacao. For them, the new hotel was a welcome possible source of customers. In other places, however, sheer isolation makes development a real challenge.

Leandro, a basket-maker originally from Cape Verde. Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

Next day I took the boat from Bom Bom island and motored anti-clockwise. There were some fabulous beaches, all deserted, then several great towers of rock loomed up. Beneath a spectacular pair of them was a village. “That is Lapa,” said the boatman. “They have nothing.”

I could see a few pigs running along the beach and a handful of simple wooden cabins with dugout canoes drawn up. “Can we land?” I asked.

The boatman pulled a face. “It’s too shallow for our boat,” he said. “That’s why they never get visitors.”

I had a sudden desire to go there, even if, once again, the only way was to swim. Once again I donned my backpack and set off, arriving to a rather surprised village community who were just distributing the fish catch from a dugout canoe.

“There are 30 people here,” said one man, Paulo. “It’s a good place. We call the big mountain João Dias Pai [father], and the little one is João Dias Filho [son].”

Collecting coconuts at sunset on a remote beach near Bob Bom. Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

They all looked healthy and strong, but threadbare poor. Did they need anything? Paulo shrugged. “The fishing is good. We have our pigs.” There was a pause. “A road would help. It’s a three-hour walk to the market.”

On the way back to Bom Bom I jumped ship at a remote beach and met up with Yodi, who wanted to show me a ruined Portuguese town, Ribeira Izé, the first settlement on the island. There, just behind the jungle’s facade, were the centuries-old ruins of a port, its walls slowly being strangled and destroyed by fig trees. Some local lads shinned up a pair of coconut trees and chucked down the fruits for us to drink.

“Do they want some money?” I asked Yodi, who looked astonished.“What for?!”

Like many young people their hope was to leave and get a job on Saõ Tomé. Would they consider a job here, on their home island? They laughed. It wasn’t only about jobs; they wanted to see the big city.

Jungles and mountains … the landscape of Príncipe Photograph: Kevin Rushby/The Guardian

At dawn on my last morning, I walked along the beach then sat down on a log. A Príncipe kingfisher, unique to the island, sat a few metres away, studying the beach for tiny crabs. Behind me the wings of a Príncipe sunbird thrummed as it zipped arounda hibiscus bush. Somewhere far away I could hear a woman singing. The threats and benefits of development loom large in such a place, but the people of Príncipe had left me feeling optimistic.

When Yodi appeared, I asked him if he would like to live elsewhere. “No! I went to São Tomé and also to Libreville in Gabon, but I didn’t like them.” He laughed. “Those coconut-collector boys will go, but in a year they will be back. I prefer to be here on my island, with the flowers and birds.”

Zinha got it exactly right when she named her restaurant: life here is hard, but happy.

Way to go

The trip was provided by HB, which owns Roça Sundy (doubles from €210 a night half-board). Flights were provided by TAP Air Portugal, which flies from Gatwick to São Tomé via Lisbon from around £650 return (including an optional stopover of up to three nights). Inter-island flights from São Tomé to Príncipe start at £150 return

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed