What has Boa Vista got to offer ?
Although 2nd touristic island of Cape Verde, there is even less to see on Boa Vista than on Sal in terms of “sightseeing”. However, if you’re looking for beautiful deserted white sand beaches, snorkelling, stunning colours of the ocean and according to the season, turtles or whale watching, then you’re at the right place. And of course, you will be charmed by the always smiling and helpful people (except in the unfortunately dominant Chinese “supermarkets”!).
The beaches
The’re a few enormous, probably quite posh, hotel complexes (whole towns!) on endless sand beaches. Other than that, you can find a few really nice beach restaurants and bars on the Estoril beach beside Sal-Rey. We made acquaintance with Atila from Brasil, his wife from Italy and their daughter, who have a restaurant (Toca da Garoupa) and water sports centre there. It was great to have them with us on Illika for a short sail and afternoon, although the poor daughter didn’t like the moving of the boat much…
The calm bay of Sal-Rey, where the younsters come together at the end of the day to have a dip in the sea 
Extremely well kept and clean fish market in Sal-Rey, it’s the ladies and children taking care of the selling and market hall 
All schools we’ve seen in Cape Verde are painted in a very colourful way 
It took us a moment to find the butter in the shops! 
One of the posh restaurants in Sal-Rey. We only had a look at it and there was live music playing 
Probably the calmest bay in Bao Vista, all boats are attached to buoys in the little harbour 
From the beach of Sal-Rey looking towards the town and harbour 
The fortress on the little island infront of Sal-Rey. The channel is so shallow, we couldn’t pass in between with Illika 
Nice afternoon with Atila and his daughter. We sailed around the island to get into the bay to anchor there
A stolen petrol conduction
The first days we strolled around the main village Sal-Rey a few times, for the usual Police check-in, looking for a functional cash machine and for buying food (still stunned how expensive the vegetables and fruit are!). As we were moored on a buoy in the harbour, we left our dinghy on a little beach and walked from there.
We like trusting people, but we’re anyway quite cautious. Therefore, our engine as well as the petrol tank are locked onto the dinghy. But one day someone was not happy that the engine and petrol couldn’t be stolen, so just decided to take our conduction tube away, including the fittings and the manual pump… maybe as a revenge? You can’t really get angry at that (I mean hey, we still have our boat and our dinghy with an engine!) but it is a hell of a work to find the parts again. Not a nice experience and on top of that we were helplessly sitting on the beach with loads of shopping and Alexander, who absolutely needed to go to the toilet and the only toilet in sight was closed…
Plan B
Jean-Luc and Oliver managed to find the necessary parts – more or less – within a couple of hours and lots of walking and, for Alexander’s imminent needs, he and I rowed to the boat with all the bags and got into the boat using our plan-B method 😉 as Jean-Luc had gone off with the key…
After that day we preferred to park the dinghy in front of Atila’s place on the beach and moved to the anchorage close by.
The little beach where we usually left the dinghy while getting things done in town 
They had taken away the petrol conduction and pump… difficult to get a engine going without… 
This is what Jean-Luc and Oliver found. Good that Jean-Luc can deal with things like that! 
Teamwork: Alexander and I are sorting the left over fish for another meal 
Atila’s place on the beach – dream place for a relaxed lunch and afternoon 
View from the large dunes just south of Sal-Rey 
When the surf isn’t good enough, use the Bodyboard to surf down the dune! 
Not the best waves for surfing, but good enough to have some fun 
The white dunes along the coast pile up and with the wind form special shapes 
Stunning colours and beautiful sea of Bao Vista!
Lovely dunes and cobble stone roads
Our 1-day island discovery tour in a hired 4×4 Mitsubishi pick-up was certainly interesting. We were stunned about the kilometres and kilometres of cobble stone roads (what a work!). We found THE attraction on the island, the Desert Dunes of Viana. Unfortunately, in an euphoric mood, Alexander jumped a little too far off a dune and blocked this breath landing brusquely. He worried us but then recovered slowly during the day. The bumpy roads didn’t help, of course.
Rubbish beach
In a small colourful village in the middle of the island we had a typical and generously served meal. After that we went to find a famous turtle beach on the east coast on a safari-like dirt track. We found the beach alright, but also fell on the Tortuga Foundation base at the beach. They told us that there were 11 nests on the beach and of course we could go and have a walk and swim if we wanted. Unfortunately, what we saw on this amazing beach was shocking: so much rubbish! Therefore, our afternoon, and the rest of the day, turned into a rubbish collecting mission on this very beach… luckily we had space in the back of our pick-up!
Tortuga Foundation
We felt good after that (also Alexander!) and tried to give the guys at the turtle base a bad conscience, but they didn’t seem too concerned. Maybe we should take time to write to the Tortuga Foundation.
But we must say that generally we find the Cap Verde islands quite clean! Anyway much cleaner than the African countries visited until now.
Landscape of Bao Vista, very dry indeed! 
The Desert Dunes of Viana, THE tourist attraction on the island. 
We never figured out how it works with the donkeys. They seem to belong to nobody and are all over the island. 
Colourful like most villages in Cape Verde, where we found a nice little restaurant 
Typically served meal, lentils, vegies, rice, with grilled chicken or fish 
Safari-like tracks lead to the “turtle beach” 
One of the Tortuga Foundation camps next to the beach 
The perfect beach! If it hadn’t been for the rubbish… 
Piles and piles! Sometimes in heaps (meaning had been collected but dumped behind a bush), but we went along the beach to collect what was scattered around and had been brought in by the sea 
Saving a crab from the rubbish! 
We loaded the pick-up with the collected waste. At least the Foundation gave us the rubbish bags! 
This large spider has a dwarf drawn on it’s belly and he’s smiling! 
Ecolodge Spinguera in Boa Vista – maybe for next time…
Searching turtles
“You’re sure to see many turtles, everyone does on Cape Verde!” So, you might understand that we were getting rather desperate after a good week on Sal and a week on Boa Vista. We had only gotten a glance of a few turtles either far away or sailing by… The Islands of Sal, Boa Vista, Mayo and Santiago (the eastern islands) are the one’s where most of the nesting takes place as from end of June and the hatching until end of September. For us it was clear: it was a NO-GO to leave Boa Vista to sail west without having seen those wonderful animals in a satisfactory way!
We anchored on the southwest coast just a little south of the enormous sand beach of Santa Mónica, mainly for searching turtles. Somehow we had expected that the famous Santa Mónica would contain a few tourists / hotels, but actually there’s “only” an unfinished ghost hotel and a cute beach bar/restaurant. In fact, the only tourists we saw came on 4×4 pick-ups …, hired with driver, to enjoy the view over the endless beach with a lobster on their plate and the feet in the sand. Quite enjoyable, we agree, just we didn’t have the lobster!
On the way down to the south coast, again amazing colours and endless sand beaches 
The boys made us a wonderful breakfast with papaya and mangoes 
What a setting: Illika anchored infront of this beautiful beach, perfect for boarding 
Enjoying our time at the beach – no stress Cape Verde 
The black rocks contrast to the white sand. The clear sky was not every day though! 
Snorkelling is an every day activity for the boys 
Jean-Luc relaxed! No stress Cape Verde! 
The RIU Touareg Resort in the south of Bao Vista 
What plant is this?
Turtles just for us!
On the second morning of our anchorage, we saw those typical “bulldozer” traces on the little beach in front of us: fresh turtle traces! That alone was already exciting! The following day, no more new traces… So we lifted our anchor and scanned the whole south coast for another anchorage and hoped to see more traces or turtles. We ended up coming back to about 200 m beside our former beach. It’s maybe better to wait for turtles than searching for them!
So late afternoon, we packed a picknick and torches and towels and went to the beach, ready to spend until midnight waiting. It was a beautiful night with a bright moon. When Jean-Luc, having strolled off for a moment, came running back to us on tiptoes (like a stork, only faster), we couldn’t believe our luck! We crept up to the two turtles which were struggling up the beach, knowing we weren’t allowed to make any noise or put on any bright light. We had read that they might get scared and go back to sea without fulfilling their task.
No stress
Patiently we waited until they finished digging the hole and started laying the up to 100 eggs per nest. In our multiple researches in internet on the nesting habits, we found out that during the laying and afterwards, turtles go into some kind of trance and that you can actually touch them then. We used our red lights which didn’t seem to disturb them and were even able to touch them before they covered their holes with big efforts and made their way back to the sea.
Not ever did we think we would be able to experience such a wonderful thing! And so close up!
A turtle nest on the beach 
The typical “bulldozer” traces of the turtles coming up the beach and back again 
Other footprints in the sand 🙂 
At night the two turtles made their deep holes in the sand to lay the eggs 
So close! She was completely oblivious of us being there 
The laying procedure took probably about an hour 
After covering the eggs very carefully, she then struggled back to the sea 
And got washed back into the water
The force of the waves!
However, there was a little moment of stress during that night, when we tried to get back to Illika. There was quite a swell and we had to time the moment to rush the dinghy into the water between the breaking waves and jump on at the same time. Our first attempt was a disaster. We managed to get across the 1st wave but the 2nd one came too quickly and nearly turned the dinghy upside down! Everyone was completely soaked, the dinghy full of water! The boys jumped off and we turned the dinghy to get back to the beach… With all our force and the help of the following big waves, we pulled the waterfilled boat back on shore. We emptied it and got ready for the 2nd attempt: this time we took more time to check the wave rhythm and were more successful!
We were pretty tired, but happy, when we finally dropped into our bunks that evening ‘round midnight!
Sad about all the rubbish in Africa, Darrees Salaam beach was the same apparently and smelly! The roads on safari weren’t even cobbled, just rocks and holes and some mud.
Hi Ken, Happy to see you’re reading 😀
Rubbish got worse in Dakar and we’d seen very sad sceneries in Tunisia and Algeria. It’s a disaster! Education is necessary and they need solutions provided for the population. Difficult and long…
I used to love sitting in Grandads Jeep belting over potholes – or rather around them!
It sounds like an absolutely magical place and how lucky you were to watch the turtles nest! 🥰
Yes, so true Pip, we were lucky! Just à few days left on Cape Verde. Back end of August, we hope to see them hatching then!xxx