Sal or Santo Antão? Start here.
Which salt-lake morning actually includes the Blue Eye. Whether the turtle nights are running yet. What a buggy costs before the hotel desk adds its cut. Every tour in Cape Verde, reviewed and ranked.
In Cape Verde the island is the itinerary.
Every review on the site →There is no coast road between them. You fly or you take the ferry, and the island you land on decides whether the week is a lounger or a ridge walk.
Six islands, six lists
Sal157 tours
Boa Vista85 tours
Santiago74 tours
São Vicente59 tours
Santo Antão11 tours
Fogo7 tours
Two different holidays
Sal and Boa Vista are the package islands: hotel pickups in Santa Maria and Sal Rei, buggies, catamarans, salt pans. Santiago, São Vicente and Santo Antão are the other half — valley treks, city walks, ferries, lunch cooked by somebody who lives there. Both are Cape Verde. Only one of them is a beach holiday.
What people fly to Cape Verde for.
A crater full of brine you float in, lemon sharks in knee-deep water, nesting loggerheads after dark, and a lot of dune in between. The handful of days most trips get built around.
Sal is small, flat, and busier than it looks.
Nearly every tour on the island starts with a Santa Maria hotel pickup and ends back at one. The good ones string the crater salt pans, Buracona and the Shark Bay shallows into a single morning. The weak ones sell the same three stops with a longer lunch.
What a day out costs in Cape Verde.
Every tour on the site sorted by what it really costs per person. Resort-desk prices are not these prices.
Salt-lake mornings, turtle walks, quad and buggy hours, most town and village tours.
The full island days: 4x4 loops with lunch, catamaran half-days, the Santiago circuits.
Private guides, the Fogo summit, inter-island days and small-boat charters.
- 12-Hour Buggy Desert Adventurefrom $170
- 2Discover Scuba Diving in Salfrom $120
- 3Santo Antão Day Trip with Local Guidefrom $147
The tours Cape Verde travellers actually book.
Every review →Ranked by how many people have been and said something afterwards — not by what an operator paid to sit at the top.
1
Island Experience Tour with a Certified Local Guide
7-hour guided tour of Sal with Buracona Blue Eye, Pedra de Lume salt pools, and Shark Bay lemon sharks, plus Sal towns and scenery.
From · $41
Read our review →2
All-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay Tour
from $53
3
Experience on Sal Island with native and certified guide (including sharks)
from $36
4
Blu eye, Salt lake, Lemon Sharks & Palmeira
from $35
5
Guided Snorkeling and Reef Tour
from $44
6
Complete Excursion and Flight on the Zipline Cabo Verde
from $56
7
Horse Riding in Sal Island – Cabo Verde
from $60
8
All-Inclusive Half-Day Lounge Catamaran Cruise
from $81
Boa Vista is mostly dune, and that is the point.
Fifty-odd kilometres of sand, one small town at Sal Rei, and a freighter rusting on the north-east shore since 1968. The island runs on 4x4 and buggy days that cross the Viana desert, stop at Santa Monica, and get you back before the wind picks up.
Salt, sharks and turtles: the Cape Verde shortlist.
Beaches and boat trips you can buy anywhere in the Atlantic. These three are the reason the islands are worth the flight.
The Salt Crater
Pedra de Lume is a collapsed crater on the east side of Sal, mined for salt from the 1800s until the trade died away. What is left is a shallow brine pan inside the crater wall, dense enough that you float without trying and cannot sink if you want to. Ten minutes is plenty. The salt finds every cut you had forgotten about, which is why there are cold showers at the top.
- 1All-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,033 reviews
- 2Blu eye, Salt lake, Lemon Sharks & Palmeira★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,003 reviews
- 3All inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 311 reviews
The Shark Bay Wade
At Shark Bay, north of Santa Maria, juvenile lemon sharks come into water that barely covers your knees. There is no cage and no boat — you walk out from the sand with a guide, in a group, and they pass your shins. Go at low tide, wear something on your feet, and expect the whole thing to be over in twenty minutes.
- 1All-Inclusive Salt Lake, Blue Eye and Shark Bay Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 2,033 reviews
- 2Experience on Sal Island with native and certified guide (including sharks)★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 1,166 reviews
- 3Blu eye, Salt lake, Lemon Sharks & Palmeira★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 1,003 reviews
The Nesting Beaches
Cape Verde holds one of the largest loggerhead nesting populations anywhere, and Boa Vista and Sal take the bulk of it. The walks run after dark through the season with licensed guides, no torches and no flash, and the conservation projects cap group sizes. Outside those months the beaches are empty and the tour is not running, whatever a booking desk says.
- 1Sea Turtle Watching Experience on Sal Island★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 446 reviews
- 2Shark, Turtles, Cave, Sandboarding & Tasting Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.8 · 328 reviews
- 3Sal Island Sea Turtle Watching Experience★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 256 reviews
Cidade Velha was the first European town in the tropics, and a slave-trading port.
Ribeira Grande was founded in 1462, a short way west of what is now Praia, and grew rich as an entrepôt of the transatlantic slave trade. The pillory standing in the square was built for that trade. Above the town is the Fort Real de São Filipe; below it the cathedral ruins and the Rua Banana houses. It has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 2009. What the tours sell here is a guided history walk, usually a morning out of Praia, and the good ones say plainly what happened.
- 1Praia & Cidade Velha: Guided City Tourfrom $53
- 2Highlights of Cidade Velha with Local Guidefrom $57
- 3Calabaceira Valley Trek & Visit to Cidade Velhafrom $82
Santo Antão and Santiago are where Cape Verde is green.
Cova is a farmed crater floor, and the path out of it drops into the Paúl valley past cane and coffee smallholdings in about four hours, all of it downhill. Santiago has Serra Malagueta and the Pico de Antónia ridges. Monte Verde sits over Mindelo on São Vicente. None of it is a beach day, all of it needs shoes, and Santo Antão is reached by ferry from Mindelo — there is no visitor airport.
- 1Beaches, Villages and Monte Verde (excludes city)from $82
- 2Serra Malagueta: Principal Valley Hike & Lunch with Localsfrom $111
- 3Serra Malagueta & Tarrafal Beach Trek Tourfrom $106
When the Cape Verde wind gets up, go with it.
The north-east trades blow hardest from around December to April. That wind is why Sal and Boa Vista fill with kite and windsurf schools in those months, and why a lounger day can feel like being sandblasted. August to October is the short rain window and the calmest water: the swell drops, the snorkelling clears, and the catamarans stop bouncing.
Book these before you land in Cape Verde.
Most of the islands can be sorted from your hotel the night before. These cannot. They run on seasons, ferries and inter-island flights that will not move for your itinerary.
- 01Sea Turtle Watching Experience on Sal IslandNesting season runs roughly June to October and the night walks are guided and capped. Outside it there is nothing on the beach to see.
- 02Pico do Fogo Volcano Summit HikeFogo is a separate island reached by air or ferry, so the summit climb sits inside a two- or three-day plan rather than an afternoon.
- 03Full Day Island Tour & Visit to Cova de PaúlSanto Antão has no visitor airport. Everything goes through the Mindelo to Porto Novo ferry, and the timetable sets the length of your day.
- 04Kitesurf Lessons in Cape VerdeThe trades are a season, not a lucky afternoon: the schools on Sal run hardest December to April and the lesson slots fill through those months.
Every kind of Cape Verde day, in one place.
Newest on the Cape Verde list.
All recent →
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Sal Island All-inclusive Adults-only Catamaran Cruise
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São Pedro experience (hiking & snorkeling with turtles)
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Cape Verde – Santiago, Fogo, São Vicente & Santo Antão Islands 11 Days
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Cape Verde: Best Hikking Trails of Santiago Island – 6 Days
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