Visitors to Madeira are enchanted by its almost tropical drama. In this case, the author must confess that it was the destination of his first three plane trips. That he has a friend from there, who made him be a bit from there. From the Madeira facing the endless North. From the fearless and welcoming Seixal.
Africa Princess Cruise, 1º Bijagos, Guinea Bissau
The Africa Princess departs from the port of Bissau, downstream the Geba estuary. We make a first stopover on the island of Bolama. From the old capital, we proceed to the heart of the Bijagós archipelago.
On the political level, Bolama remains capital. In the heart of the archipelago and in everyday life, Bubaque occupies this place. This town on the namesake island welcomes most visitors. In Bubaque they are enchanted. From Bubaque, many venture towards other Bijagós.
From the walled heights of Fort King George, to the threshold of Pigeon Point, southwest Tobago around the capital Scarborough reveals unrivaled controversial tropics.
One of the main commercial arteries of West Africa, in the middle of the XNUMXth century, the Gambia River was already navigated by Portuguese explorers. Until the XNUMXth century, much of the slavery perpetrated by the colonial powers of the Old World flowed along its waters and banks.
In the XNUMXth century, a Dutch captain nicknamed this island surrounded by a turquoise Indian Ocean, “Rottnest, a rat's nest”. The quokkas that eluded him were, however, marsupials, considered sacred by the Whadjuk Noongar aborigines of Western Australia. Like the Edenic island on which the British colonists martyred them.
In 1919, Arthur Eddington, a British astrophysicist, chose the Roça Sundy to prove Albert Einstein's famous theory. More than a century later, the island of Príncipe that welcomed him is still among the most stunning places in the Universe.
Upolu is home to the capital and much of the tourist attention. On the other side of the Apolima strait, the also volcanic Savai'i is the largest and highest island in the archipelago of Samoa and the sixth in the immense Polynesia. Samoans praise her authenticity so much that they consider her the soul of the nation.
After a first foray to Roxa Island, we set sail from Canhambaque for an end of the day discovering the coastline in the vast and uninhabited bottom of Orangozinho. The next morning, we sailed up the Canecapane River, in search of the island's large tabanca, Uite.
Felicité Island and Curieuse Island, Seychelles
In the middle of the XNUMXth century, it remained uninhabited and ignored by Europeans. The French Ship Expedition “La Curieuse” revealed it and inspired his baptism. The British kept it a leper colony until 1968. Today, Île Curieuse is home to hundreds of Aldabra tortoises, the longest-lived land animal.
The Spanish discoverers named it Purple Island, but the predominant tones are those of countless coral reefs in a shallow sea. Confined to her five Keys, Islamorada remains peaceful, in an alternative halfway between Miami and Key West, the Florida cities that the prodigious Overseas Highway has long connected.