10-Day Cabo Verde Island Journey with Pico do Fogo and Santo Antão

Arrive in Praia on Santiago, the largest island and the seat of government, and settle into the Plateau, the colonial grid on the bluff above the harbour. In the afternoon, walk through the district to see the Presidential Palace, the Ethnographic Museum, and Praça Alexandre Albuquerque, then head down into the Sucupira market, a vast, loud, entirely unsentimental African market that offers the best possible correction to any preconception about what this country looks like. Dinner includes a first cachupa.

Travel west along the coast to Cidade Velha, founded in 1462 as the first European town in the tropics and now UNESCO-listed. Visit the pillory in the square, the ruined cathedral, Rua Banana, and the Fortaleza Real de São Filipe on the ridge above, looking down on the bay that was the hinge of the Atlantic slave trade.

In the afternoon, continue over the mountains through Assomada and the Serra Malagueta to the north of the island, where the country turns green and agricultural and nobody stops.

The short flight west to Fogo lands beneath a volcano that is the entire island. São Filipe is one of the handsomest towns in the country, with two-storey sobrado merchant houses, wooden balconies, and interior courtyards stacked on a black-sand cliff above the sea, with the cone permanently behind them.

Spend the afternoon walking through the town, including the municipal market, the old Portuguese quarter, and sunset from the clifftop over the Atlantic, with Brava lying across the channel.

Head up into the volcano. The road climbs to the caldera rim at 1,600 metres and drops through a gap in the wall onto the crater floor, a black plain of ash and lava where a thousand people live.

The 2014 eruption buried Portela and Bangaeira; the families rebuilt on top of the flow, and you walk it with someone who did. In the afternoon, visit the vineyards planted in ash, see the coffee production, taste manecom wine, and visit the community cooperative. Tonight, sleep inside the caldera.

Set out before first light for the cone: 1,100 metres of ascent in about three hours on ash and rock to the crater rim at 2,829 metres, the highest point in the country. From the top, take in the whole caldera and the ocean beneath, with sulphur still venting from the 2014 vent below.

The descent is the part people remember - about forty minutes of running down a scree slope in enormous strides. Return to São Filipe in the afternoon, sore and pleased.

Take the flight north to São Vicente, usually via Praia, and arrive in Mindelo, which is the country's cultural capital and knows it. Spend the afternoon exploring the town, including the colonial waterfront and the Torre de Belém replica, the fish and fruit markets, Praça Nova, where the whole town walks in the evening, and the Cesária Évora house.

Then enjoy dinner and head out to one of the small live-music places off the square, where morna and coladeira start late and are played for the room rather than for visitors.

Take the morning ferry across the channel to Porto Novo, then drive one of the great roads of Cabo Verde: the Estrada da Corda, cobbled by hand and climbing from the dry south over the spine of the island to 1,600 metres at the Cova crater before dropping into the green north.

Stop at the rim to look down into Cova, a farmed volcanic crater with its floor under cultivation, then descend into Ribeira Grande and settle on the north coast for three nights.

This is the best walking day in Cabo Verde. A vehicle takes you back up to the Cova rim, and from there the route drops the whole length of the Paul Valley to the sea: five hours of continuous descent through terraces of sugarcane, banana, coffee, mango, and yam stacked on both walls, past aqueducts and hamlets linked only by cobbled paths.

Along the way, stop at a trapiche where cane is still crushed by an ox-driven press and distilled into grogue in a copper still, and taste both the grogue and the ponche.

Today's walk follows the coast. From Ponta do Sol, an old cobbled path traverses the cliff face above the Atlantic, and around the first headland Fontainhas appears: a green spur with a village built on it and a few hundred metres of air below.

Continue to Corvo, then on the longer stretch to Cruzinha da Garça, three to four hours in all, with the ocean below the whole way and a vehicle waiting at the far end. The afternoon is free in Ribeira Grande or Ponta do Sol.

Take the morning ferry back across the channel to Mindelo, timed with margin against your flight. If the day allows, drive up Monte Verde for the view over the whole island and the channel you have just crossed, or spend a last hour in the market.

Then transfer to São Pedro airport. Cabo Verde connects to Lisbon, Boston, and increasingly to West Africa, and we are glad to build a Sal or Boa Vista beach finish, or our Senegal & The Gambia expedition, onto the end.