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ISOLATIONIN SPLENDIDAngola’s closest cultural ties are with the tiny archipelago of São Tomé and Príncipe,which is now becoming a paradise for tourists. Sarah Monaghan reports ➔

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Iam in a fairytale scene. Abandonedcolonial buildings surround me, thejungle having wreathed its way around

them like Mayan temples. A banana treehas invaded the hall of the casa do patrão(the master’s house) and lianas are clam-bering across its peeling ceilings. Is Sleep-ing Beauty lying upstairs?

A shutter flaps in the wind. I climb amarble staircase. From a balustrade bal-cony onto which the sun spills comes thereflected sparkle of turquoise waters andthe view of a palm-fringed beach below.The chlorophyll green of the jungle leadingdown to the shore is lit by the hot orange offlame trees and the flash of a yellow-breasted sunbird.

Time seems to have stopped onPríncipe. I am part of a living history lesson.This plantation, Roça Sundi, encircled byturreted walls, was once the island’s biggestcocoa estate and a former home to the Por-tuguese royal family. In its grounds a rust-ing steam locomotive still sits on corrodedtracks. Until 40 or so years ago, it wouldhave carried fresh cocoa beans through thejungle to the coast for export to Lisbon.

It is little wonder that São Tomé andPríncipe give a sense of being a tear in thefabric of time. Positioned off the West Coastof Africa, the islands are, in geographical

terms, at the centre of the world – the clos-est land mass to the point in the Atlanticwhere the imaginary line of the equatorcrosses the zero meridian. Older geologi-cally than the Galapagos Islands, they areso isolated that many plant and birdspecies are endemic.

SlavesCarlito is my guide. He, like many islanders,speaks Lung’iye, a Creole tongue, as well asPortuguese. His ancestors came from CapeVerde and were part of the import of thou-sands of slaves brought in by the Por-tuguese from the 15th century onwardsfrom its African colonies. Toiling a six-dayweek, with only the songs of their home-land to break the monotony, their effortsmeant that by the early 20th century the is-lands had become one of the world’s largestcocoa producers. Carlito’s father was stillworking for a Portuguese plantation ownerin 1975 when independence was declared.

Today, oil exploration has begun off-shore, and tourism and investment arebringing a new optimism. Cocoa and coffeeproduction is restarting and many of theold plantation houses are being restoredas rural hotels, attracting adventurous trav-ellers keen to trek the rainforests, lounge onthe deserted beaches and explore thecrumbling colonial splendour.

In the capital city, São Tomé, a Por-tuguese chain has just opened a five-starhotel complete with infinity pool over the

bay where the first Portuguese ships landedin 1470. Along the coast, the prettiestbeaches dotted by fishermen’s shacks areearmarked for holiday developments.

On Príncipe, I base myself at Bom BomIsland Resort. Pagoda-style bungalows siton a shoreline overhung by coconut palms.Each evening I cross a long wooden pier,through which the waves splash, to aforested islet and a simple restaurant wheretables are decorated with tropical flowers.

The other guests are a group of Portuguese, an Englishman and his grand-son here for the excellent sports fishing,and two adventurous tourists from Paris,Oscar and Ludwig, who have spent the pastweek trekking on São Tomé, staying in re-stored roças, the old feudal plantations.

It is so delightful here that it would beeasy to simply sit on my veranda with anovel, watching fallen coconuts wash inand out, and that is exactly what I do on myfirst day. The next day, I go scuba diving.The volcanic ocean floor and the mix of equatorial currents make for a fantastic underwater show of fan corals, turtles, barracuda and rays.

Oscar, Ludwig and I set off on quadbikes the following day. We rumble pastclapboard houses painted tropicalturquoise, fuchsia or yellow. Their residents wave and call a welcome goodmorning: “Bom dia!” We reach Roça BeloMonte, another example of tumbledownsplendour high on a hill. “It’s gorgeous. I �

Angola’s historical, economic and cul-tural links with São Tomé and Príncipeare so strong that they even feature onthe back of the 5,000-dobra note, whichdepicts São Tomé’s most impressiveplantation, Roça Agostinho Neto. Origi-nally named Rio do Ouro, it was re-named Agostinho Neto in 1979 after thefirst Angolan president and poet (1922-79) to celebrate the political, militaryand financial help his government gaveto the young republic. His bust stillgreets visitors on arrival at the roça,where there are plans to convert the for-mer hospital building into a universitycampus for the island.

Historically, Angola’s most significantrole in the history of São Tomé andPríncipe is perhaps found at the fishingtown of São João dos Angolares in theeast of São Tomé. The Angolares, a fish-ing people populating the coastalstretches from Santa Catarina in thewest down to Ilhéu das Rolas in thesouth, have fascinated the local imagi-nation for a long time.

A distinct socio-cultural group ofseveral thousand, they speak their ownlanguage, N’gola. For centuries, mys-tery surrounded the question of how theAngolares came to be on the island.Legend tells that the Angolares are thedescendents of a slave ship fromAngola shipwrecked here, whose ReiAmador led the most successful slaveuprising in 1595. He remains a nationalhero and is very important to the Ango-lares and Santomean identity. TheAngolares’ Creole culture remains alivein language and rituals, in bulaué musicand the work of local artists. The dra-matic works of Fernando de Macedo(1927-2006) focus on Angolar historygiving voice to this history of San-tomean society. Macedo, a Portuguesewriter who styled himself as a descen-dant of the last Angolan king, cele-brates the landscape and the force oftradition on the island. You can impressthe locals here with a few words of theirN’gola. language: Ma vira-ó? Everythingok? N’ sabóa! Everything is fine!

The Angolan connectionRoça Agostinho Neto

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want to buy this house and restore it to aboutique hotel,” sighs Oscar. He is too late.A Portuguese company has had the sameidea…

FootprintThe sun has come out. Below is Praia Ba-nana, a curve of white sand with gin-clearwater that was once the setting for a Bac-ardi rum commercial. There’s not a singleother footprint in the sand on this picture-perfect beach. We run to dive into the sea.

It is a 40-minute hop in a propellerplane across the 150km of ocean thatdivides Príncipe from São Tomé and its ‘in-ternational’ airport – grass grows betweenthe cracks on the runway and goats andhens roam outside. Two hulking rusting1950s propeller planes sit on a slipway.

In São Tomé’s tiny capital I wander thestreets, making small talk with money-changers with battered briefcases, and ad-miring colonial-style buildings with ornatewooden balconies that would not look outof place in Havana. Overlooking it all is thelumbering white fortress of São Sebastião,built by the Portuguese in 1576 and now thenational museum. The curator moves astone trap door. Rebellious plantationworkers used to be placed in the dungeonbeneath and dealt with by the tide.

Swarming the capital’s main square aresaffron-yellow taxis alongside a raucousmarket where women sit with pyramids oflimes, tomatoes and chillies, or piles ofspiny breadfruit and pockmarked jack-fruits. Others have enamel bowls, balancedon their heads, from which poke the jaggedtails of peixe voador (flying fish).

Three hundred and sixty degrees ofocean mean that fish is always on the menuand during my stay I eat plenty, from shar-ing a simple meal of grilled fish and bread-fruit with fishermen over a beach fire to anelaborate tasting menu of traditional San-

tomean cuisine at Roça São João. This restored roça is the perfect exam-

ple of a successful rural ecotourism ven-ture. Run by celebrity chef João Carlos Silva,whose TV series On the Plantation withMoustaches has been hugely popular inAfrica, it has six simple but elegant guestbedrooms with views over the forest downto the fishing village of São João dos Ango-lares.

SpicesThe six-course tasting lunch uses spicesthat echo a heritage stretching fromMozambique to Angola and to Cape Verde.I savour rice fish balls with saffron and co-riander; grilled tuna with vanilla seeds;omelette de micoco, a thyme-like herb, andthe national dish calulú, a stew made fromsmoked chicken and fresh herbs.

On my last evening at Café e Compa-nhia, a bar where tables spill into the street,I meet a young Santomean painter, KwameSousa. His Impressionistic work of exuber-ant colours and local scenes sells for highprices in Lisbon and is on display at thecity’s Teia D’@rte Gallery that exhibits workby native artists and those from former Portuguese colonies.

“Life is so real here and the colours areso unreal,” enthuses Kwame. In recentyears, he says, the islands have become anartistic mecca. To prove the point, he in-vites me to a street party near the gallerywhere we see more innovative work onshow and where a kizomba band plays asensual but stomping rhythm that has itsroots in the music’s Angolan heritage.

I leave São Tomé and Príncipe in a blurof colour: from the bright yellows and pur-ples of cocoa pods; to the pink of the porce-lain-like rose endemic to the isles; to thecobalt waters that shine through the palmtrees, this is a dazzling country that offers avery warm welcome. �

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His Impressionistic work of exu-berant colours and local scenessells for high prices in Lisbon and is ondisplay at the city’s Teia D’@rte Gallery“

”Sarah Monaghan travelled to SãoTomé and Príncipe with Africa’s Eden(www.africas-eden.com). Activitiesdepend on the season and includeguided island-exploration tours,plantation visits, trekking, birdwatch-ing, whale watching, sea turtle nightviewing, quad biking, sports fishing,kayaking, snorkelling and diving.

From Europe: You can travel to SãoTomé and Príncipe directly from Lisbon with TAP or via Gabon withAir France, Gabon Airlines, Royal AirMaroc or Lufthansa, with a connect-ing flight to São Tomé (one hour fromLibreville) with the EquatorialGuinean airline CEIBA on Mondaysand Fridays. Africa’s Eden’s own airline Africa’s Connection connectsSão Tomé with Príncipe.

From Angola: STP Airways flies eachWednesday to and from Luanda; The Angolan airline TAAG flies twicea week, Sunday and Friday.

The local currency is the Santomeandobra ($) although euros are widelyaccepted. Portuguese is the linguafranca; French is also widely spoken,and some English.

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