The Hidden Island That Doesn’t Want to be Found (Yet)
((1839))
“Here!” Pajó called from somewhere uphill. Momentarily distracted by the brilliant flash of yellow and the rapid-fire, buzzlike call of the Príncipe golden weaver, one of 27 endemic bird species on the West African island of Príncipe, I’d temporarily lost sight of my guide. I squinted through a rainforest canopy so dense, the light filtering through was tinged green. Finally, I spotted the red collars of Pajó’s hiking shoes, and scrambled up the slope to join him.
In his hands, Pajó held a ripe cacao pod, the rusty hue of corten steel. He thumped it against a nearby rock and it split neatly in half, exposing its seeds. With two fingers I plucked out a pebble-sized seed, covered in sticky white pulp, and popped it into my mouth. A pleasant tanginess and mild chocolatey flavor spread across my tongue.
It was my first multisensorial taste of Príncipe, and only one of its many surprises. A paradisiacal isle nearly unknown to North Americans, Príncipe and its sister island, São Tomé—the country’s full name, São Tomé and Príncipe, is often abbreviated to STP—are volcanic specks rising from the Gulf of Guinea. Measuring about 386 square miles between its two landmasses, STP is the second-smallest country in Africa, after Seychelles.
São Tomé and Príncipe’s rich basaltic soils, heavy rainfall, stable temperatures, and millennia of isolation have led to the evolution of unique ecosystems that shelter flora and fauna found nowhere else—one reason that UNESCO designated the islands the world’s first entire-nation Biosphere Reserve in 2025. São Tomé is the larger and more populous of the two, with roughly 95 percent of the country’s 245,000 residing there. Príncipe, with just 10,000 people, is wild and unspoiled, an ideal destination for travelers with a thirst for adventure, a love of nature, and a desire to experience slow travel at its best.
My morning cacao tour with Pajó continued with a stop at Roça Sundy, one of 2 historic roças, or colonial plantations, on the island; they and four others on São Tomé have just been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list. In the early years of the twentieth century, STP was dubbed the "Chocolate Islands" for their significance in the production of cacao, a crop introduced by Portuguese colonizers, via Brazil, in the 1820s.
My mission at Roça Sundy: to visit their chocolate-production facility and taste a range of products, including rose petal–smooth 60, 70, and 80% cacao bars, and chocolate honey, all derived from Africa’s first Bird-Friendly‒certified cacao. I’d later be introduced to their cacao-based body products, which are used as bath amenities at HBD Príncipe resorts. In 2027, a new HBD resort will open at Roça Sundy, joining the newly launched Belo Monte, also located in a historic roça.
In the afternoon, my guide deposited me at Bom Bom (“Good Good”), the hotel group’s bohemian, barefoot-luxury property located on a pristine strip of wave-whalloped beach of the same name. Bom Bom was the first under the HBD umbrella, which was founded by South African tech billionaire Mark Shuttleworth. His affection for this raw, blooming landscape runs so deep, the brand has become the driving force behind a number of sustainability projects on the island.
On the ground, HBD partners with nonprofit Fundação Príncipe to safeguard sea turtles, forest ecosystems, and Marine Protected Areas. Last summer, they built a new, modern village for a group of 133 local residents who were living in a collapsing plantation. HBD has also created sustainability-benchmark programs for local businesses, and trade programs that help women artisans learn marketable skills and gain financial independence.
The latter part of the day, when the equatorial heat and humidity are at their most oppressive, is for rest on Príncipe. I alternated taking dips in the ocean and Bom Bom’s pool with sinking into a cushioned chair, book in hand, on the porch of my thatched-roof, ocean-view bungalow. I lingered beneath the wicker pendant lamps of the resort’s greenery-surrounded restaurant, savoring Portuguese-meets-African cuisine like a creamy, curried squash soup with croutons, a shredded cabbage salad with generous chunks of fresh papaya, and grilled snapper served alongside crispy taro wedges. In the evening, I drifted to sleep against the soundtrack of the sea rushing and retreating against the sand.
In the morning, I hiked with Pajó along the steep, rocky trail to the Oquê Pipi Waterfall, the largest on the island at nearly 100 feet high, and took a dip in its bracingly cool pool. Along the trek, he pointed out wildlife like the vociferous African gray parrot and the tiny Dohrn’s thrush-warbler, whose sweet, lilting song is singularly uplifting. We stopped to examine wild mushrooms growing on a fallen log, and collected a few breadfruits, a starchy fruit that, when mature, tastes like a creamy potato. Pajó took special delight in watching my facial expression as I tried mangungu (Thaumatococcus daniellii), a native plant whose bright crimson fruit, which looks a bit like a shriveled cherry bomb pepper, contains a protein roughly 2,000 times sweeter than sugar.
The next morning, I tagged along with Emma Tuzinkiewicz, HBD’s sustainability director, to explore more of the island and the hotel group’s many projects. We began in capital city Santo António’s beating heart: its farmers market, where we walked the aisles of tomatoes, peppers, garlic, dried and fresh fish, bananas stacked five bunches high, and even household staples.
In Porto Real, once the home of Príncipe’s largest roça, and now a small village of about 300 people, we stopped for a peek into the scenic ruin of the Roça Porto Real Hospital. Like the island’s plantations, it was abandoned after independence in 1975. In the half-century since, the rainforest has thoroughly reclaimed it, roots, woody vines, ferns, and palms growing up and around the structure’s plaster-coated concrete walls. The decaying building is an important cultural landmark to São Toméans, with Príncipe’s brides ascending its narrow stone staircase to have their wedding portraits snapped.
Then it was off to the Cooperative for Waste Valorisation, where a group of women transform the island’s discarded glass bottles and containers into vibrant beaded jewelry. At Terra Prometida (“Promised Land”), the new village built by HBD, we met a young female artisan who learned to sew only a few years ago, and now sells her hue-happy clothing and accessories both to residents and to HBD’s resorts. I couldn’t help but be moved by these women’s stories of how learning a trade has built their confidence, given them purposeful work and a creative outlet, and helped them gain financial independence. When Tuzinkiewicz dropped me off at my next on-island home, Sundy Praia, I immediately headed to the gift shop so I could purchase some of the jewelry and bags I’d seen.
Where Bom Sienkiewicz was a laid-back, beachy sanctuary, Sundy Praia felt like a secret escape in the rainforest, albeit one full of luxury touches, including sprawling tented villas, a spa, and an excellent restaurant with a dramatic design inspired by a whale’s skeleton. Each morning, I started with a sunrise walk over the resort’s elevated wooden walkways, accompanied by mona monkeys racing through the treetops, and dazzlingly colored malachite kingfishers searching for snacks along the resort’s stream and coastline.
With a handful of other guests, I joined a boat trip out to the Bay of Needles, on the western side of the island, where we snorkeled and bobbed in the bathtub-warm water. The fish didn’t cooperate on this particular outing, but the prehistoric phonolite towers rising out of the clear aquamarine waters were mesmerizing.
The following day, Pajó and I toured HBD’s ambitious agroforestry program, walking beneath arbors covered in passionfruit and papaya, and between cultivated plots of cabbage, eggplant, zucchini, and sugarcane. HBD also takes advantage of foods and spices that grow wild here, such as vanilla and malagueta, a pepper about twice as hot as cayenne.
Not far from Sundy Praia, we walked the trail to Ribeira Izé, Príncipe’s “Lost City.” Founded in the sixteenth century, it was the first settlement on the island, and became a powerhouse of sugarcane and coffee production. Today few structures remain, but you can still walk through the elegiac ruin of its church.
My favorite time of day at Sundy Praia was after sunset—a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it event near the equator, as the sun sinks below the horizon at a nearly 90-degree angle. After full darkness descended, I ventured out of my villa at the rainforest-meets-beach edge of the resort. The first night, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I heard a rustling racket in the understory. I shined my flashlight ahead of me onto the cobble walkway, and found a conga line of forest crabs, about the size of mason jar lids, scuttling toward their woodsy burrows. The shiny blue-and-red critters were more interested in creeping along the forest slopes than they were in me, and I came to appreciate my nightly restaurant escorts.
On my last evening, I lingered at the edge of the walkway by the beach, listening to the ocean lap against the shore and thinking about the cacao pulp on my tongue, the artisans who stitch their newly found confidence into every seam, the rainforest patiently swallowing a century of ruin. This is an island that has been through the worst of what people can do to a place, and has chosen to grow back greener. As the birds settled into their nests and the crabs scrambled into their burrows, I realized I wasn't leaving so much as carrying a little of Príncipe's unhurried rhythm home with me—along with a bar of 80 percent chocolate, a bag of beaded jewelry, and two handbags I’d already decided to give away only to people who would ask where they came from and who made them.
How to get to São Tomé & Príncipe
Currently, there are only a few commercial airline options for traveling to São Tomé, including Afrijet and ASKY Airlines, which fly direct from Libreville, Gabon (Air France will get you from Miami to Gabon, usually with a stopover in Paris).
TAP Air Portugal, via Lisbon, has the largest number of year-round flights to São Tomé, plus direct flights between Miami and Lisbon. Its high rate of delay and cancellation earned it the dubious distinction of “Europe’s most delayed airline” by compensation-recovery platform FlightOwed. (My trip was delayed by about 4 hours on the arrival, and more than 8 hours on the return.) Passport control lines at the Lisbon airport, which has struggled with passenger volume and the rocky rollout of the new EES system, can be lengthy, so leave yourself plenty of time for connections.
Once on São Tomé, fly to Príncipe via STP Airlines. Both the São Tomé and Príncipe airports work with private aviation companies, so if chartering a flight is an option, jump on it.
International passengers pay a modest €25 per person tourist entry fee upon arrival at São Tomé. Remember to bring proof of yellow fever vaccine; without it, you’ll be delayed in customs and charged an additional €25. Upon landing in Príncipe, you’ll pay a €10 per person tourist tax.