Paul Valley, Santo Antao Island, Cape Verde
Cape Verde

Hiking through Paúl Valley – A Place Lost in Time

The hike through the Paúl Valley is one of the most stunning on the island of Santo Antão…

The Paúl Valley on Santo Antão is absolutely, hands down, the most stunning place I have ever been to. The valley seemed right out of Gabriel García Márquez’s magic realism novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”. The greenest valley among all the islands of Cape Verde, it is dedicated primarily to agriculture. Here, mangoes, passionfruit, bananas, sugarcane and many other crops grow in abundance.

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde santo antao
View as we ascended up to the ridges of the Paúl Valley

The hiking trail winds along the valley’s terraced slopes, ascending and descending over its many ridges. The start of our hike, at Pé d’Eucalipto, was about sea-level, gradually climbing up to one of the valley’s highest peaks, before descending again.

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde Santo Antão
View of Paúl Valley, just outside our Ecolodge, Aldeia Manga, located in the heart of the valley

Its undulating nature afforded us many different viewpoints of this beautiful area. I suppose what makes this hike such a great one is that the views are constantly changing, with new surprises around each bend and ridge.

Paúl Valley floor terraces
The view near the bottom of the Paúl Valley

At the highest point of our hike, we were rewarded with swooping vistas looking into the entire valley. The Paúl Valley is at once wild and domesticated. The huge variety of produce grown prevents it from suffering the fate of most agricultural landscapes, which tend to specialise in only one or two types of crop.

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde santo antao
Descending from the highest point of our hike through the Paúl Valley

As we descended from the peak, we heard the bleating of little goat kids and encountered a small tribe of them in a stone shed. They were playful and didn’t mind us hanging around making photos of them.

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde santo antao baby goats
Kid goats, a couple of weeks old, in a barn near the highest point of our hike through the Paúl Valley

For lunch, we stopped at Rosa’s home, in a cosy stone house typical of the Paúl Valley area. This was a much needed break for our knees. The home-cooked meal of chicken (and they only have the free range sort here), and various root vegetables, prepared by Rosa’s daughter, Joana, was also very much welcomed. The view from the sheltered balcony where we lunched, was right out of a storybook.

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde santo antao
The vegetation along the lower reaches of the Paúl Valley hiking trail

Lush vegetation surrounded us, and a little stream ran alongside our hiking trail, pooling beside potato patches and cutting into rocky outcrops.

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde santo antao, Boca de Figueiral
A farmer showing off the new born calf (only a few hours old) of his cow

We descended all the way to the valley floor, into the area of Boca de Figueiral, where we encountered more livestock. Mar, our guide, stopped to chat with the man who was tending to a cow and its calf. He told her that the calf was born just last night, and lifted it in his arms for a photograph. We continued along the valley floor, which was absolutely stunning, walking alongside the river towards our pick-up point. The area was bustling with activity, with children bathing in little stone reservoirs, women doing the laundry and men hauling cement and other construction material in sacks balanced on their heads!

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde santo antao cape verdean girl bathing amazing hair, Boca de Figueiral
A Cape Verdean girl we met in one of the villages, while walking along the Paúl Valley floor

By mid-afternoon, we were in the town of Cha de Manuel dos Santos, where our pick-up awaited, to take us to the beautiful ecolodge, Aldeia Manga. Possibly one of the most uniquely situated properties in the entire world, Aldeia Manga is right in the heart of the Paúl Valley, in the small village of Lombo Comprido. The drive to the lodge was picturesque, passing by small white stone houses with thatched roofs.

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde santo antao
Cute little white house with thatched roof, along the road to the Aldeia Manga ecolodge

After some time, it became apparent why we were riding in a four-wheel drive. About a kilometre away from the lodge, the cobblestone road turned into a dirt track and veered steeply upwards. It made me think of how much skill it must take to navigate the roads of the Paúl Valley.

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde santo antao
View from our drop-off at the Aldeia Manga ecolodge

I was completely gobsmacked when I saw the lodge for the first time. To be honest, for every day I was there, I couldn’t believe such a place could, and does, exist. The lodge comprises of 6 separate guest-houses, accessed from the central garden, which also features a swimming pond. The garden itself is lovely, both wild and tame at the same time, featuring all sorts of flowering plants, both native and foreign to Cape Verde. But the best thing about Aldeia Manga is the view from the garden, which faces a steep ridge stretching out into the clouds. On the first day we were there, a layer of mist covered the entire valley, and a layer of thick fog clustered at the peak of the ridge, making it seem as if it went on forever, into the sky.

Hiking Paúl Valley cape verde santo antao
View from the Aldeia Manga ecolodge