One thing you can’t avoid noticing when you visit Sal Island, Cabo Verde is the large number of stray dogs. I was wary of them at first but soon saw how friendly they were. They mostly sleep in the sun all day with the occasional barking party at night. Here are some of our favourites.
Start & Finish: Electrica Electric Bikes, Pier Street, Santa Maria, Cabo Verde
Distance: 20 km (12.4miles)
Elevation change: +/- 142m
GPX File: get via Buy Me a Coffee
Other routes touched: None
Cafes on route: Many in Santa Maria Centre, plus Cafe at Mitu & Djo Kite Surf School Kitebeach (9km in) and Ponta Preta Cafe or Bo Beach Bar (16km in)
Map: Free leaflet with a map available at Electrica Bikes. See image
Links: Cabo Verde, Sal, Santa Maria, Ponta da Fragata
The Electric Bike tour is a highlight of a stay in Santa Maria on Sal Island in Cabo Verde. You can either take a half-day guided tour or rent the bikes for a full or half day. We opted for the half day rental without the guided tour and roughly followed the map on the leaflet provided at the bike shop. The half day is enough unless you want to explore the north of the island.
Navigation via the small map on the leaflet was fairly straightforward. Roads and tracks are not well signed so we took a couple of wrong-turns before finding our route again. The GPX file linked above is a good option if you want to be more confident that you’re on the right track.
From Electrica Electric Bikes on Pier Street head toward the beach then take the street on the left closest to the ocean. Follow this in a easterly direction, taking the first street on the left and then the first on the right to join Rua 15 Agosto. When you reach the Angulu Beach bar on the right you’ll have left the paved streets and will now be on sandy dirt track. Here’s a good point to turn on the electric assist if you’ve not done so already.
From here continue along the track closest to the sea for ~3 km km until you reach the edge of the Nature Reserve. Along the way you can stop to see the Shell Cemetary, Ponte Leme Rock Pier and a decaying memorial stone on Praia de Igrejinha. The Costa da Fragata Nature Reserve is the furthest point you can go by bike. Follow the track away from the beach to the north easterly point of the town, re entering it one of the parallel roads running to the north-west. These roads are not named on the map so unless you’re using a GPS, keep to the most northerly residential road.
Continue down the road for approx 700m and take a right onto the road that lead you out of town in a northerly direction to the kite beach. Stop along the way for some great photos of the salt beds. The café at the kite beach is a good place to stop for a coffee and a rest. It took us around an hour and a quarter to get to this point.
When leaving the kite beach café, take a right onto the road, continue past another café then take a smaller track on the left. Follow this for 1.7 km, past the sewerage works until you meet the main north/south highway at a roundabout. Despite being the main island road it’s not very busy and we were able to safely cross it during a very large gap in traffic. Take the 2nd exit and follow the main track as it curves in a south-westerly direction to Cabocan
The track to Cabocan follows flat sandy ground that’s empty apart from stones marking out future roads and hotel developments. Join the main north/south road, then take a track down the north side of the Melia Dunas Beach Resort to a promenade by the beach. Continue heading south until you reach the end of the promenade. The leaflet from the bike company made it look like they continued along the beach but it was very sandy so we took the track on the south side of the Melia Tortuga Beach resort to rejoin the main road. From here we continued south until the end of the developments and took a track across the sand to Ponta Preta.
Ponta Preta is another good place to stop as there’s 2 bars on the beach. We stopped for lunch at the bar called Ponta Preta. This is another popular kite and windsurfing spot. Don’t stay too long though as you’ll need 30 minutes to get back to the bike shop from here.
When leaving Ponta Preta take the track south as it curves around the turtle hatchery beach. Head for the far corner of the closest resort to the beach and take the promenade as far as you can. When you run out of promenade head toward the main road that runs behind the big resorts. On the north-west side of the Hilton you can take a side road to the main beach promenade. Take a left on the promenade and follow it back to Pier Road and the bike shop where you started.
We made full use of our 4 hour / half day rental, retuning the bikes within 2 minutes of our allotted time. This included a short break at the kite beach for a coffee and 30 minutes for lunch on Ponta Preta. It was a great first experience for us of riding electric bikes. I won’t be giving up my mountain bike anytime soon, but this one was fit for purpose for the trip. It would have been doable on a normal mountain bike with a light frame too but this was a far more relaxing way to get through the sand and rocks to see the main sights of the southern end of the island.
Start & Finish: Visitor Centre, Salinas de Pedra de Lume
Distance: 4.3 km (1.9 miles)
Elevation change: +/- 35m
GPX File: get via Buy Me a Coffee
Other routes touched: None
Cafes on route: Cafe at the Visitor Centre
Links: Cabo Verde, Sal, Pedra de Lume, Pedra de Lume Salt Mine
Visiting the Salinas (Salt Mine) at Pedra de Lume is a highlight of any day-trip around Sal Island in Cabo Verde. Most visitors to the island will be staying in or around Santa Maria and island day-trip excursions are easily found. We wanted a more private tour so we hired an English speaking taxi driver for the day for 60 Euros. For 2 people that’s not much more than the cost of joining a group tour. The roads to the Salt Mine are very poor and I wouldn’t recommend driving there yourself.
The Salt Mines are in the Pedra de Lume crater which is an extinct volcano. The salt evaporation ponds were built over a natural salt lake that formed through infiltration of water from the sea. The floor of the crater is below the sea level and is the lowest point in Cape Verde.
On the approach road to the Salinas you’ll pass Pedra de Lume village on the coast. There’s not been active salt extraction since the 1990s but you can still see the decaying buildings and equipment. The boat graveyard has the remains of the vessels that exported the salt out of the island. From the coast you can trace the route of the salt to the crater via the line of towers that carried the salt via cables.
There’s a small car park on the outside of the crater where you can access the interior via a tunnel. On the other side, at a lower level, is the Visitor Centre. Here you can find a café, shop, toilets and showers. Many groups visit to float in the salt pools. I was in 2 minds about doing it and probably would have if I hadn’t already has the salt floating experience in the Dead Sea in Israel. It was cold and windy when we were there so we opted for a circular walk of the crater instead.
The crater is around 900 m in radius and there’s a walking path of approx 3km around the salt flats on the base. From the Visitor Centre it’s best to start in an anti-clockwise direction. This north-easterly side has the clearest path and best signage. Although the path on the first half is very clear, the benches have seen better days. Some are intact, others somewhat dilapidated, and there’s information boards without information. When you get to the half-way point, just beyond the track from the Visitor Centre that bisects the salt flats, the perimeter path is much less clear. You can’t get lost though, just look out for the next bench (or remains of) and stay close to the outer edge of the ponds until your return to the start.
After the circuit we also walked half-way along the central path to get a closer look at the salt-flats. Our total walk in the crater, including the out and back from the car-park was around 5km.
Shark Bay - very close to Pedra de Lume
Port of Palmeira - a good place for lunch
