Why Sao Tome and Principe
At the exact equator, a two-hour flight from Libreville and one night from Lisbon, two volcanic islands emerge from the Gulf of Guinea as if forgotten by the world. Sao Tome and Principe is not a mass destination: it is a secret shared between naturalists, lovers of virgin beaches and travelers who are still looking for places where no one has gone before them. Less than 20,000 tourists set foot there each year. For comparison, Zanzibar receives two million.
The main island, São Tomé, is covered by 30% primary equatorial forest, which is ranked among the richest in Africa in terms of biodiversity. Pico de São Tomé, at 2,024 metres, changes vegetation every 200 metres above sea level, from cocoa under shade to misty moors populated by endemic species found elsewhere on Earth. At its feet, golden sandy beaches guarded by leatherback turtles, the largest in the world, come to lay their eggs at night between July and September.
Cocoa is the other treasure of the archipelago. The Portuguese, who colonized these uninhabited islands in 1486, imported the crop from Brazil. The roças, these colonial plantations with their singular architecture, bear witness to five centuries of complex history. Today, their cocoa dryers still smell of chocolate and their alleys of hundred-year-old trees are home to some of the best beans in the world. Tasting a square of Claudio Corallo chocolate produced here, under the equator, remains one of the most lasting memories that the archipelago has to offer.
