Cape Verde or the Canaries: Which Should You Choose?

Two archipelagos ripe for exploring

Is your idea of paradise walking through desert landscapes or watching baby tortoises hatch on endless untamed beaches? The Canaries and Cape Verde share a volcanic natural heritage, but they offer radically different experiences to explore. Below, we take a look at a few of their distinguishing features to help you choose between these two gems in the Atlantic Ocean.

map of the Cape Verde and Canary Islands

The Canary Islands: an archipelago living an eternal springtime

With its year-round springtime temperatures and low levels of rainfall, the Canary Islands are well worth exploring at a gentle pace. Volcanos, caldeiras and coastlines are all there waiting to be discovered, without any danger of blistering heatwaves or winter chills.

The world’s largest solar observatory

Teide is the tallest volcano in Europe at an altitude of 3,715 metres, and a peaceful location on the island of Tenerife for the world’s biggest solar observatory. On the island of La Palma, the Roque de los Muchachos is another outstanding astrophysicists’ observation site that illuminates one of the clearest (and most accessible) skies on the planet, according to the Starlight index. When the new moon is out, the Milky Way is visible to the naked eye!

Bringing Mars to Earth

Lanzarote’s landscape has been carved by remarkable numbers of craters. In fact, it looks much like a faraway planet, with its stony plains, craggy volcanic rock faces and the absolute silence of wide-open spaces that make you feel as though you are exploring Mars. With its ochre, red and black hues and land stripped of all vegetation, Timanfaya National Park is considered one of the most alien spots on planet Earth.

The whistled language of La Gomera

Silbo Gomera, the language of the island of La Gomera which uses whistling to communicate across vast volcanic valleys, is listed by UNESCO as intangible cultural heritage. It was passed down by the Canary Islands’ original inhabitants, known as the Guanches, and is understood by about 20,000 people according to UNESCO. It switches around the vowels and consonants spoken in Spanish.

Landscapes sculpted by César Manrique

In the painting and sculptures of modern art icon César Manrique, Lanzarote becomes an open-air work of art. In the late 1960s, the artist and environmental activist created places which allowed art and architecture to blend into the island’s volcanic nature. Jameos del Agua is a beautiful example of this, its lava cave hiding an underground lake and spaces sculpted into the rock. The more northerly Mirador del Río serves as a spectacular balcony onto the ocean and island of La Graciosa.

The Canary Islands in numbers

Area: 7,447 km²
Number of islands: 8
Languages spoken: Spanish (Castilian) and Canary Island variants
Climate: subtropical oceanic
Temperatures: from 18°C (winter) to 26°C (summer) on the coast
Status: An independent region of Spain
Population: around 2.2 to 2.3 million
4 UNESCO sites (World Heritage): Teide National Park; Garajonay National Park; San Cristóbal de La Laguna; Risco Caído and the sacred mountains of Gran Canaria
4 national parks: Teide, Garajonay, Caldera de Taburiente, Timanfaya

Cape Verde: a cultural melting pot

While the Canary Islands are scattered along the Moroccan coastline and retain a strong Spanish influence, the independent archipelago of Cape Verde is on the same latitude as Dakar and has inherited a colourful blend of cultures and customs from its African and Portuguese inhabitants.

The legacy of a barefoot diva

On São Vicente island, the soul of Cesária Évora seems to live on through culture and nightlife that beats to the sound of morna. This form of music combining song, poetry and dance was listed as intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2019 and exists only on Cape Verde. The “barefoot diva” sang about the island of her birth in one of her greatest hits, “Petit Pays”, which still echoes around the winding streets of Cape Verde’s cultural capital, Mindelo.

40,000 baby tortoises every year

The eastern beaches of Sal island host the fascinating display put on by loggerhead sea turtles arriving to birth their babies. Forty thousand baby tortoises are born every year in Cape Verde according to Project Biodiversity, a local environmental non-profit that supervises observations of these majestic reptiles. It is quite something to behold: in the dark of night, the sea turtles lay nearly 80 eggs into holes they have dug in the sand. The turtles that hatch will measure about 90 cm once they have reached adulthood and can live as long as 50 years.

The Sahara on the move

On Boa Vista island, a strip of land just 5 km long by 1 km wide intersects the local landscape to form the Viana desert. It was shaped by the trade winds coming from the east which carried Saharan sand for hundreds of miles above the ocean to Cape Verde. The sand dunes provide quite the contrast with the surrounding mountains and acacias which speckle the landscape, creating a strange patchwork of blond sand, red earth, deep green brush and azure sky. Every visit is unique in that the winds redraw the Viana desert’s landscape each year.

Villages perched on the volcano’s side

With zero running water, zero electricity, 700 inhabitants and a lunar landscape, Chã das Caldeiras on Fogo island numbers among the most isolated communities in Cape Verde. And for good reason. Its four little villages were formed in a crater, only to disappear during volcanic eruptions. They were then rebuilt using stones of black lava. This unique place is a testament to an extreme way of life in a completely singular landscape, where the people make volcanic wine from vines planted on the volcano’s sides.

Cape Verde in numbers

Area: 4,033 km²
Number of islands: 10 (9 of them inhabited)
Languages spoken: Portuguese (official), Cape Verdean creole
Climate: dry to semi-arid tropical
Temperatures: 22°C to 30°C year round
Status: An independent republic since 1975
Population: around 520,000
UNESCO sites (World Heritage): Cidade Velha
30 protected landscapes: the national parks of Monte Gordo, Fogo, Moroços and more

île tropicale de Cresta de Gallo, Philippines

Let PONANT take you there

Set sail for unspoilt archipelagos along the African coast

View all cruises to the islands of the Atlantic

The Canary Islands and Cape Verde: See the Atlantic Differently