Cape Verde Trips

Cape Verde’s tours centre on Santo Antão, the greenest and most mountainous of the islands, reached by a short ferry from Mindelo on neighbouring São Vicente. The self-guided Cape Verde Trekking Adventure Tour spends eight days on the island, climbing the Vallée de Paul, following old cobbled mountain roads between villages and tracing coastal paths high above the Atlantic, typically with luggage moved between stays so you walk with only a day pack. It is graded moderate and runs from February to June. The tour is one of 10Adventures’ trekking tours and sits within the broader range of hiking tours worldwide and the guided Africa tours collection.

Evenings on the trail are spent in small family-run guesthouses, with local dishes such as cachupa and the Paul valley’s own grogue rum to round off the day. The walking is steady rather than high-altitude, so a reasonable level of fitness is enough to enjoy it, and the dry months from late autumn through spring bring the clearest skies and the greenest valleys.

Cape Verde rewards walkers who want dramatic mountain scenery without the crowds. Santo Antão’s trails were built as cobbled mule paths linking villages across the ridges, so much of the walking follows centuries-old routes with constant views over terraced valleys and the ocean below. The islands stay mild and dry for most of the year, the trails are quiet even in peak season, and a week of hiking pairs easily with time on the beaches of Sal or São Vicente and the live morna music of Mindelo.

If Cape Verde’s volcanic trails appeal, there is more island hiking across the Atlantic. The self-guided Canary Islands hiking tours cross the craters of Tenerife and La Palma to the north, and self-guided Portugal hiking tours take in the laurel forests of Madeira and the crater lakes of the Azores. On the African mainland, guided Morocco hiking tours climb the High Atlas to Mount Toubkal.