Cape Verde Bus Independent transit guide
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Bus guide

Hiking island

Santo Antão

There is no scheduled bus network. Aluguers wait at Porto Novo pier for each ferry arrival and run the mountain or coast crossing to Ribeira Grande, Paúl and Ponta do Sol, leaving once they fill. Because they are keyed to the boat rather than to a clock, the ferry schedule is effectively the island’s timetable — and no authority publishes an aluguer time or fare.

By bus

Getting to Santo Antão

There is no scheduled bus network. Aluguers wait at Porto Novo pier for each ferry arrival and run the mountain or coast crossing to Ribeira Grande, Paúl and Ponta do Sol, leaving once they fill. Because they are keyed to the boat rather than to a clock, the ferry schedule is effectively the island’s timetable — and no authority publishes an aluguer time or fare.

  • Published ferry crossing: 40 minutes, São Vicente to Porto Novo.
  • Aluguers meet the boat at the pier; miss the ferry and you usually miss the onward connection too.
  • Ask for a seat price rather than a trip price — the same vehicle is also sold as a private charter.

Source: CV InterIlhas: Routes, schedules and island-to-island crossing times · ENAPOR: Ports of Cabo Verde · Governo de Cabo Verde: National transport services portal

Check the Barlavento ferry crossing

Before you go

Times change. Take them with you.

Published departures shift with the season. Cape Verde Bus keeps the current timetable in your pocket.

Cape Verde Bus — app coming soon

Get notified at launch Check the Barlavento ferry crossing
Cloud spilling over the jagged peaks and farming terraces of the Paúl valley, Santo Antão
Photo: CaptainDarwin, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped)

Worth your time

What Santo Antão does best

Santo Antão is a green vertical world of terraced ribeiras, sugar-cane stills and footpaths cobbled by hand. There is no airport, so every visitor arrives by the same 40-minute boat from Mindelo into the dry moonscape of Porto Novo — then crosses the spine of the island and drops into the wet north, where Ribeira Grande, Paúl and Ponta do Sol sit under 1,800-metre walls.

The Ribeira Grande valleys

Terraced fields stacked to impossible angles, villages clinging to the walls, and grogue stills working the cane by hand. This is the walking everybody comes for.

The old cobbled road

The original hand-laid road over the crater rim to Cova is a piece of engineering as impressive as the view from the top of it.

Ponta do Sol

The northern tip, where the coastal path to Fontainhas hangs off a cliff above the sea — the most photographed footpath in Cape Verde, and rightly so.

Good to know

  • German and French walkers make up much of the traffic here; trail information circulates in those languages first.
  • The south is desert and the north is green — do not judge the island from Porto Novo.
  • The last vehicles over the mountain go earlier than you expect; arriving on a late boat can strand you in Porto Novo.

Keep exploring

Evening light over Mindelo and Porto Grande bay with the Monte Cara ridge behind, São Vicente Music island São Vicente Mindelo: the country’s cultural capital, its liveliest port, and its least documented bus network. Plan the ride Turquoise shallows at Santa Maria beach on Sal with a catamaran and yachts at anchor Gateway island Sal The main international arrival point, with the flattest landscape and the thinnest public transport in the country. Plan the ride Rusting hull of the Cabo Santa Maria shipwreck standing in the surf on Boa Vista Dune island Boa Vista Sahara dunes, nesting turtles and sand roads — three hours from Sal by sea and nothing scheduled on land. Plan the ride