Sao Tome and Principe

The aroma of coffee and cocoa invades the streets of this archipelago-state suspended between the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, where the Portuguese colonial imprint is still present in the architecture of the cities and in the roças, the generous plantations that open up between a lush primary forest, dotted with volcanic peaks, waterfalls and lakes, idyllic natural pictures framed by magnificent palm-fringed beaches.

The secluded islands of Sao Tome and Principe, like tiny jewels, open up into the crystal clear waters off the coast of Gabon. Precious is the fertile soil, the natural scenery of ancient volcanic earth, the bursting nature of unique biodiversity, between beaches and hinterland, home to lute turtles, an extraordinary variety of endemic birds and the great humpback whales that dot the magnificent jagged bays. Its popular traditions are precious, a meeting point between Africa, the Americas and Portuguese Europe, a hybrid culture between colonial legacies and the customs and traditions of a peaceful and welcoming population, which has been able to reinvent itself, recreating new roots and overcoming a sad past of slavery and deportation.

Crossed by the Equator and the Greenwich Meridian, this tiny archipelago-state, originally uninhabited, still has the appearance of an earthly paradise lost in the middle of the sea, far from the tourist routes, a wild and generous land, cultivated and transformed only in part, among the historic plantations of cocoa and coffee, bananas and sugar cane.