Fogo means fire, and the island earns its name. A single colossal volcano rises from the sea to 2,829 metres, the highest point in Cabo Verde, its black cone visible from three neighbouring islands on a clear day.
Inside the vast caldera at 1,700 metres lies Chã das Caldeiras, one of the most improbable inhabited places on Earth. Its villagers farm coffee and fruit in pure volcanic ash, live beside a crater that erupted as recently as 2014, and rebuilt their homes on the fresh lava within a few years. Their resilience has become a national symbol.
The pre-dawn climb to the summit of Pico do Fogo takes three to four hard hours up scree and old lava, and the descent is a twenty-minute controlled slide back down the ash slopes that hikers describe as the most fun they have ever had on a mountain. Local guides from Chã lead every ascent.
Down at the coast, São Filipe is among the prettiest towns in the country, its sobrado merchant houses with wooden verandas looking across black sand to the island of Brava. Fogo's high-altitude coffee, grown on the volcano's slopes since the nineteenth century, is prized far beyond the islands.
Known for
- Pico do Fogo summit
- Chã das Caldeiras
- Volcanic coffee
- São Filipe old town
Good to know
Eruptions in 1995 and 2014 reshaped the caldera; vulcanologists monitor it constantly.
Fogo coffee is one of the country's signature exports.
São Filipe's clifftop position gives almost every street an ocean view.