Pico do Fogo

PeaksFogo,Cape Verde

A 2,829-metre cone inside a nine-kilometre caldera on Cape Verde whose floor people farm, growing the country's only vineyards in black sand beside 2014 lava.

September·Quiet month

Sep–Oct

The rains peak now — September is the wettest month — so the ash trails turn slippery and low cloud hides the summit views. The grape harvest is over. The caldera turns green, and the village, its guesthouses and its guides stay open all year.

Year-round The cone, the bare 2014 lava and the vineyards in black sand are here every day, and the caldera is climbed year-round. What changes with the season is the clarity of the air, the rains, the trail underfoot and the harvest.

Pico do Fogo stands 2,829 metres above the Atlantic, the highest ground in Cape Verde, and its cone rises from the floor of a caldera some nine kilometres across. That caldera is Chã das Caldeiras, and people farm it. The western wall, the Bordeira, rises in a cliff a thousand metres high; the eastern side gapes open to the sea. The floor between them, 1,700 metres up, is the only ground in the country that grows grapes in quantity. The vines go straight into black volcanic sand, and the wine they make, Manecom, is dark and sweet. The climb up the cone takes three to four hours from the village. It is 1,100 metres of loose ash and cinder, and the slope gives back half of every step. In November 2014 the mountain erupted and buried the villages of Portela and Bangaeira, taking three quarters of their buildings, the school and the wine cellar. The flows ran on for seventy-seven days, and every one of the caldera's thousand people was moved out. By the time it stopped the lava had spread across more than four square kilometres of the floor. Within two years their people were rebuilding on the cooled lava, inside a zone where the government had just banned rebuilding altogether. That argument — a mountain against people who will not leave it — is the story of the place. Back on the caldera floor the 2014 lava lies bare and black, with roofs still half-swallowed beside new houses. That eruption came after a nineteen-year pause, and nobody in Chã speaks as though the mountain is finished.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Guides set off from the village in the dark, around 4am — the 1,100-metre ash slope is far kinder in the cool, and you reach the crater rim before the day's heat builds.
The grape harvest runs from July into early September, when the caldera fills with pickers and the cellars open the new Manecom — though it overlaps the rains, when the trails are at their roughest.
The climb starts in Chã das Caldeiras, not in São Filipe — take a local guide from the village itself, and plan to come up the evening before and sleep inside the caldera.
Gaiters, ankle boots and a windproof layer earn their place here — the fine ash pours into low shoes, and the summit can sit near freezing at night while the coast is still at 25°C.

Things to do

1
Climb to the crater rim and run the ash back down
At the rim the crater opens 500 metres wide and 150 deep, fumaroles venting along its edge and the air turning sharp with sulphur, the whole island and the Atlantic laid out below. Going down is the reward: the ash is deep enough to run, each stride sinking in and carrying you several metres, so the grind uphill disappears in minutes.
2
Cross the black lava fields under the Bordeira
The caldera floor is a field of broken volcanic rock that crunches and rings underfoot, some of it only a few years old. Above it the Bordeira draws a thousand-metre wall around half the horizon, and the sense of standing inside something enormous never quite leaves you.
3
Drink Manecom in the black-sand vineyards
Chã is the only place in Cape Verde that grows grapes in any quantity, and the vines are planted directly into volcanic sand and lapilli. In the village cellars and at the rebuilt co-operative you can taste Manecom, the dark, sweet, faintly smoky house wine the caldera is known for.
4
Stand at the rooftops the 2014 lava swallowed
In Portela and Bangaeira the lava stopped with houses half-buried in it, so that roofs and door lintels still surface from the black rock. New homes now stand a few metres away — the clearest picture anywhere of what it means to live on an active volcano and refuse to move.