Sal Island's beach town — windsurfing world cups, warm water, and African soul
Santa Maria is the beach resort town on Sal Island, the flattest and sunniest island in the Cape Verde archipelago. The wide beach of white sand and turquoise water at its south end is one of the finest in the Atlantic; the town's fishing pier and market give it genuine Cape Verdean character beyond the resort hotels. Sal Island is a global windsurfing and kitesurfing destination — the conditions here are so consistently perfect that the PWA World Cup is held here annually. Humpback whales pass offshore in spring; loggerhead sea turtles nest on the beaches in summer.
Sal (Portuguese for 'salt') was the first Cape Verdean island colonised, valued for its salt flat (Pedra de Lume) that produced salt traded across the Atlantic. Santa Maria was founded in the 19th century as a salt-loading port; the wooden pier still used by fishing boats was built for this trade. The island remained sparsely populated until the 1990s, when its combination of reliable trade winds and warm shallow water attracted the windsurfing world. Tourism development has been rapid since — Santa Maria transformed from a fishing village to an international resort in under 30 years.