Santa Maria Cape Verde

No stress - That's the mantra for this city.

The city is quite small, and offers a small number of stores but more restaurants. The beaches at Santa Maria are vast and beautiful, and it's far from crowded.

Apart from discovering the different restaurants from food and drinks it's wort to get up early to see the fisherman's come back to the pier with their catch.

There is a lot of dogs in this city, a majority of them has a owner but they are all loose, enjoying their life at the beach. It's an fantastic feeling to see them running free along the beach, or enjoying  a good rest in the shadow. This must be dog heaven :)

 

Colorful houses in Santa Maria

 

A man with a tuna fish for his restaurant

 

 

Fresh tuna!

 

Street of Santa Maria

Dogs looking what they can get from a couple

 

 

Blue water and amazing beaches

 

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Best restaurants Santa Maria Cape Verde // bästa restaurangerna santa maria kap verde // mejores restaurantes santa maria cabo verde

First thing: Do not book an all inclusive hotels when going to Cape Verde, these islands offer so much fresh sea food and why go so far when you only want to end up within the walls of an hotel?

There are quite many restaurants in Santa Maria, and you can see all the one's we have rated on tripadvisor HERE

One this to be aware of as an tourist in Cape Verde, is that there is a risk to get sick from water and food. Therefor we have sincerely provided our personal warning for one restaurant that was top rated on tripadvisor, where we actually got sick from the poor sanity in the restaurant kitchen. However, we can recommend two restaurants where we felt safe and the both the service and food was very high quality

For drinks, we recommend the local beer Strela (light, refreshing beer) and the white Cha wine from one of the Cape Verde island Fogo.

The top 2 restaurants are Atlantis and Barracuda.

Atlantis has wonderful sea food, fresh lobsters (provided by their own fisherman!), great service, nice locations on the beach, what more can we ask for? This place is also perfect for lunch since they have also lighter options available. This restaurant actually gave the absolute best service that we could experience on the island.

Barracuda is also located on the beach, the atmosphere is slightly more loud during the nights than Atlantis, but still very nice. The owners is a couple where the wife is the head chef and the husband manage the restaurant service. Very friendly, the chef wife comes out among the guests to ask for feedback, we enjoyed every visit!

The Cha wine is available as red and white wine, and our favourite was absolutely the white. We also learned that the white comes in two types, and the original/old one that you see on the picture was the favourite

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Things to do Cape Verde, island of Sal

To be honest Sal is a very relaxing island, you will get easily get around and see much of the island in less than one day in a Jeep. It's not much vegetation and it can look a little bit like the moon sometimes, but there are some interesting places that we would like to recommend. Apart form discovering the island by car you can rent bikes, go hiking with a guide, ride horse on the beach, kite and wind surf and much more.

We recommend that you go by Jeep, since you will have to drive off road. Use your common sense and turn around if you dont trust the path you are trying to go. Throughout Sal, as soon as you leave the main road, there are basically no signs, and there is no maps covering the hundreds and hundreds of small off road tracks, don't get lost, especially not in an area without cell phone reception :)

Pedra de Lume is a village just by the capital Espargos. The village is tiny, and it's not much to see, except for the old salt ponds. They are located in an inactive vulcano and they started to produce salt in the 18th century but are now inactive. However you can go there to have a look, go swinning in the very salty water that will make you float very easily and buy some salt for cooking or for body treatments.

It's quite difficult to find the way, but when you see a white and blue church you are supposed to leave the road and drive passed the church and continue behind it, off road.

 

The old salt mines are located in an inactive vulcano

 

You can basically pic up the salt from the ground

The salt lake where you can take a refreshing swim

Salts for sale

 

 

Salt cristals

 

 

Since this is very close to Espargos, the capital of Sal. We recommend that you quickly drive through it, you can always stop for a lunch and some photos if you want to since it is a nice and colorful city.

Buracona and the Blue Eye. West of Espargos you will find Burancona. When you leave the roads (ask the locals since this one is also diffcult to find) you will have approx 5 km to drive off road. It's a nice bit of coast with a natural pool where you can swin if you want to, and if you are lucky with season and sun, you can spot the "Blue Eye". 

From Buracona we did exactly opposite to what the car rental recommended us, and instead of driving back the normal way back we continued north off road for some adventures. The landscape is facinating and you can spot Monte Grande which is approx 400 meters in altitude. We where driving on the many small tracks, trying to head for Espargos, we ended up in the townships outside Espargos and finally reach the main road without any trouble.

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Trip guide Cape Verde // reseguide Kap Verde // guia de turistas cabo verde

We are back from Cape Verde! It was a fantastic relaxing trip to the island Sal with a lot of beach life and dinners of lobster and other mixed sea food. Cape Verde is a group of islands and next time we will make a round trip to the other islands as well that all offers different climates and things to do and see.

Sal is however a fairly dry island, not much vegetation and its very popular among kite surfers for the constant winds. The weather in march was very good, 23-25 degrees during the day and 20 during the night.

The people where very friendly, and it felt safe everywhere we went. Even when we got got off road in the desert with our jeep and ended up in very ruff townships when trying to reach a decent road, it felt quite safe.

Trip guide Cape Verde (click the links):
Best Restautant Santa Maria Cape Verde
Santa Maria and the beaches
Pedra de Lume
Buracona and the Blue eye

Below are some snapshots of the highlights from our vacation.

 

Salt mines at Pedra de Lume

 

Lobster fresh from the sea

 

Fantastic endless beaches

 

Turtles comes to lay their eggs on the beaches of Sal

 

Beaches, beaches, beaches...

 

 Catch of the day

 

 

Buracona

 

Snapshot from Santa Maria

Next Stop: Cape Verde!

Next week we will be off to Cape Verde, a group of islands outside the west coast of Africa.

We look forward to the beach, sunny weather, explore the islands and to meet the local people.
When it comes to food culture we are expecting to enjoy a lot of seafood! Fisherman's comes back to shore early every morning to sell what they did capture during the night.

Meanwhile our visit to Cape Verde, we will  share some fantastic seafood recipes as inspiration.


Anyone that already been to Cape Verde? Let us know your experience!

The picture is from a previous travel to Portugal, that we will tell you more about later. But since it's the same ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, that we will dip our toes in and the same language, Portuguese, that is spoken at both locations we thought the picture could represent our coming trip to Cape Verde ;)