CAPE VERDE


Clockwise from below: Alcinda Fonceca, chef- owner of a Pico de Antónia cafe on Santo Antão; lantana flowers grow across the island; farmers work stone terraces on the steep slopes


sawn through desiccated terrain. As soon as I start inland, on a five-mile hike along the now dry Ribeira do Paúl, the world erupts into technicolour. The valley is Cape Verde at its greenest, overspilling with sugarcane and bananas, manioc and yams, dragonflies and egrets. Nowhere is flat by nature — it’s all angles, outcrops, rock ribs and ridges — but somehow villages cling on. The trail through the valley to the ridge-top hamlet of


Pico de Antónia is all up, but I enjoy the climb, following a quiet road at first, which weaves from the ocean and up into the hills. Soon, in the dry riverbed to the side, I pass a man with muscles like an Ancient Greek hero, who’s sifting pozzolana (volcanic ash) to be used for cement-making. Another is busy cracking fresh almonds with a pick — he hands me a tiny nut as I go by. Then, as I swap roads for trails, I see farmers bent double on the edges of stone-walled terraces, pulling up pungent spring onions. As I venture deeper up the valley, it begins to resemble a living Machu Picchu, with stepped fields rising higher and higher up the hulking peaks. As I’m looking up at all this, a lady skips easily down the


slope towards me. Red scarf wrapped around her head, Jesus gazing out from the front of her T-shirt, she shouts her name, Alcinda Fonceca, entreats me to stop at her cafe when I reach it, then dashes off again. This dedication to touting for business on steep mountain paths deserves reward, I think. So when, 20 minutes later, I finally arrive at Alcinda’s place — one of a handful of precipitous houses that makes up Pico de Antónia — I order a coffee on her veranda. From here, bony shoulders of land shrug upward, while terraces cascade below. Alcinda motions across the valley to point out the coffee bushes where the beans in my brew came from. My walk finishes at O Curral, a barn-cum-bar in the


village of Chã de João Vaz. Here, where most of what’s sold comes from the owners’ fields. This includes homemade juice, cheese and grogue (rum distilled from sugarcane). The latter has been produced on the islands since the Portuguese first arrived and is now Cape Verde’s national drink. Most of the country’s grogue comes from Santo Antão, with the best said to originate in the town of Paúl. It’s only mid-afternoon but, with the sweet scent of cut cane floating on the breeze, it seems rude not to try one — especially at 150 escudos (£1.15) a slug. With the mercury hovering around 26C all year, hiking in Cape Verde is thirsty work — made all the harder by strong and consistent wind and sun. I sip the clear liquid, which is surprisingly smooth but strong as iron; my head immediately swims. That evening, in Ponta do Sol, I try it again. The old


town, sprawling on a peninsula at the island’s northern tip, has a handful of bars dotted along its wide, cobbled


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