Cape Verde Bus Independent transit guide
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Ferry guide

Flower island

Brava

Brava has no published road service and no airport. Furna is the port; Nova Sintra, the main town, sits above it, and the villages beyond are reached by aluguer arranged locally. The only documented service is the 50-minute crossing from Fogo, and the island’s reliance on a single vessel is its defining transport risk.

By bus

Getting to Brava

Brava has no published road service and no airport. Furna is the port; Nova Sintra, the main town, sits above it, and the villages beyond are reached by aluguer arranged locally. The only documented service is the 50-minute crossing from Fogo, and the island’s reliance on a single vessel is its defining transport risk.

  • Fogo–Brava ferry: 50 minutes; 950 CVE national, 1,500 CVE non-national.
  • No commercial airport, so there is no air fallback when a sailing is cancelled.
  • Build spare days into any Brava leg rather than booking a tight onward connection.

Source: CV InterIlhas: Routes, schedules and island-to-island crossing times · CV InterIlhas: Passenger tariff (national and non-national) () · Instituto Marítimo e Portuário: Maritime and port regulator

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Vila Nova Sintra spread across Brava’s green crater plateau with the Atlantic beyond
Photo: Ingo Wölbern, Public domain

Worth your time

What Brava does best

Brava is green, misty and tiny: a volcanic cone of hydrangeas and stone villages that earned it the name ilha das flores. It has no commercial airport, which makes the fifty-minute crossing from Fogo the single thread connecting it to the country. When a vessel goes out of service, Brava is genuinely isolated for days — a recurring reality rather than a hypothetical.

Nova Sintra

A cool, damp hill town of pastel houses and gardens, named by settlers who thought it looked like Sintra in Portugal. They had a point.

Fajã d’Água

A bay village at the bottom of a long descent, with a black-sand cove and the best swimming on the island.

The walking

Old paved paths link the villages across the crater rim — short distances, serious gradients, and mist that arrives without notice.

Good to know

  • Treat the return crossing as the fragile part of the trip and keep the schedule loose.
  • Nova Sintra has the bank and the shops; Furna is just the pier.
  • The channel between Fogo and Brava is short but frequently rough — it is not a crossing for the queasy.

Keep exploring

White sand and turquoise water of Tarrafal bay beneath a green volcanic headland, northern Santiago Capital island Santiago Praia, Cidade Velha and Tarrafal — the only island in the country with a published city bus network. Plan the ride The bare cone of Pico do Fogo rising above black lava fields in Chã das Caldeiras Volcano island Fogo A live volcano with a village inside its crater, five hours from Praia by sea. Plan the ride Quiet beach and pastel seafront houses of Porto Inglês, Vila do Maio, in early light Quiet island Maio Empty beaches and salt flats an hour and three-quarters from the capital — the least visited inhabited island. Plan the ride