Praia de Santa Mónica

Overview

Praia de Santa Mónica is a beach of pale sand on the south-west coast of Boa Vista, backed by low dunes and scrub and reached only by unsurfaced track. The nearest settlement is the village of Povoação Velha, about 5 km to the north, and the sand lies near the mouth of the Ribeira Baixa, the dry watercourse that runs south from the village to the Atlantic. The name is simply Portuguese for the beach of Saint Monica.

How long it actually is

Every source gives a different figure, because nothing on this coast marks where one beach stops and the next begins. Boa Vista’s official tourist site describes 11 km of sand. The Portuguese Wikipedia article puts the sand at around 18 km, citing a tour operator page that is now dead. OpenStreetMap splits the difference in a different way: the polygon carrying the name measures a little over 5 km end to end, while the shoreline tagged with it runs for roughly 17 km, absorbing the neighbouring strands. The stretch people mean when they say Santa Mónica is somewhere between five and eleven kilometres of continuous sand, and it merges without a break into Praia do Curralinho to the north-west and Praia de Carquejinha, itself about 8 km long, to the east.

The setting

The beach sits at the southern end of the Morro de Areia Nature Reserve, which covers the south-western coast from Praia de Chaves down to Santa Mónica. The reserve takes its name from a 167 m hill, protects about 21 km of land plus a 300 m marine strip, and was created to safeguard the movement of the dunes along with ospreys, red-billed tropicbirds, turtles and nurse sharks. Nothing shades the sand: Portuguese Wikipedia describes the beach as very exposed and without any shade at all, which is the most useful sentence written about it.

History

Boa Vista was a cattle range after its discovery in 1460, and the first permanent settlement came around 1620, when salt mining turned profitable and Povoação Velha was founded inland of this coast. Pirate raids in the early nineteenth century pushed the population north to Sal Rei, and the south-west has been thinly inhabited ever since. Povoação Velha still stands at the foot of the 357 m Rocha Estância, keeps a chapel of 1800 and a church of 1828, and holds the health centre nearest to the beach.

The older name

Portuguese Wikipedia records that the beach was formerly called Porto Português, on the tradition that this was where the Portuguese first landed on Boa Vista. The claim rests on an archived travel-agency page rather than a documentary source, so treat it as local tradition rather than settled fact.

What development has and has not arrived

Santa Mónica has been inside a designated tourism development zone for years, and Portuguese Wikipedia noted plans to build resorts in its vicinity long before anything appeared. Very little has been built on the sand itself. The nearest large hotel is the five-star Hotel Riu Touareg, roughly 9 km to the south-east at Urbanização Lacacão on the Carquejinha side of the coast, not on Santa Mónica proper; in September 2026 the operator’s own page listed it as closed for a full renovation with reopening announced for October 2026. The one thing that has changed on the beach is small: a seafood and grill restaurant opened here in 2025, working from a single building with its feet in the sand.

Visiting

There is no surfaced road to the beach. Reaching it means a 4x4, a pick-up, a quad or a place on an organised excursion, and the usual approach runs south from Povoação Velha for about 4 km on an unpaved track that follows the Ribeira Baixa down to the coast. Wikivoyage notes flatly that there is no through road along the south coast at all. The beach restaurant puts the drive from Sal Rei at about 30 minutes by 4x4 or pick-up.

Going with a tour

The island’s official tourist site sells a south tour by 4x4 that takes in the dunes of Praia de Chaves, the track along the coast to Praia de Varandinha, Povoação Velha and then Santa Mónica, with a stop long enough to eat and swim. It runs daily with departures at 09:00 and 14:00 from hotels and Sal Rei, returning after about four hours for the half day or eight for the full day. Prices are quoted per vehicle: half day 90 euros for one or two people, 120 for three or four and 180 for five to eight, and full day 120, 160 and 240 euros for the same brackets, as listed in September 2026.

The same site runs an overnight beach camp on Santa Mónica: an afternoon arrival, tents pitched against the dunes, dinner cooked on the spot and breakfast by the water. It takes groups of two to eighteen, minimum age six, and is priced at 190 euros per person for two, sliding down to 100 euros per person from nine people up, with no deposit and payment on site.

What is on the sand

One restaurant. It serves seafood and grills, opens daily from 10:30 to 18:00 with the kitchen closing at 16:00, has toilets and shaded seating, and takes bookings for groups. OpenStreetMap records a second beach eatery a few hundred metres along the same stretch. Beyond that there are no showers, no loungers to hire, no shop and no shade you did not bring yourself.

Swimming, honestly

Nobody watches this water. Boa Vista’s official site is direct about it: the sheltered bay at Sal Rei is the safe place to swim, currents elsewhere on the island can be strong enough to be dangerous for inexperienced swimmers, and even at the resorts there is no rescue service outside daylight hours. Santa Mónica is open Atlantic with no reef in front of it, and winter storms push waves close to three metres on this island. Wading and short swims in calm conditions are one thing; treating it as a swimming beach for children, or going in alone, is another.

Wind and walking

The wind is the other half of the experience. North-easterly trade winds blow hardest in January and February and can carry Saharan dust that hangs as a fine haze, the bruma seca; spring brings less constant wind but frequent gusts. On a breezy afternoon loose sand moves at ankle height across the whole beach: it stings bare legs, works into cameras and makes a sunshade almost impossible to keep upright. Mornings are usually calmer, and a long walk is what this beach is genuinely good for.

Tips

Before you go

• Bring more water than you think, plus a hat, sunglasses and high-factor sunscreen. The island’s official site makes the same point about the lack of any natural shade on Boa Vista’s beaches, and Santa Mónica is one of the most exposed of them.
• Carry cash. Neither the beach restaurant nor the tour operators publish card terms, and Cape Verde prices in escudos while tourist operators often quote euros.
• Do not attempt the approach in an ordinary hire car. The final stretch is unpaved and sandy.
• Aim for the morning if you want calm air, and the late afternoon if you want the light. Between them is the hottest and windiest part of the day.

Turtles and the dune rules

Boa Vista holds one of the world’s largest nesting populations of loggerhead turtles, and roughly two thirds of all nesting activity in Cape Verde happens here. Rangers and volunteers monitor around 35 km of nesting beach from June to October, with camps on this southern coast at Lacação and Curral Velho and a protected hatchery at Lacação.

If you want to see a nesting turtle, go on a licensed excursion rather than looking on your own. Guided night tours run from June to mid-October, with August the peak of the season, and they head for the monitored beaches on the south-east coast rather than here. Photographs are not allowed during the tour, even without flash, and the official site advises firmly against driving out to turtle beaches unaccompanied. Tours were listed at 55 euros for adults and 35 euros for children aged 6 to 11 in September 2026, leaving hotels between 19:00 and 20:00 and returning around midnight.

Fitting it into a trip

Santa Mónica pairs with Povoação Velha and the west-coast beaches on a single southern loop, which is how the island’s tours are built. The dunes of the Deserto de Viana and the Cabo Santa Maria shipwreck sit on the other side of the island and belong to a different day out. From Sal Rei, allow a full day rather than a half if you want the walk as well as the lunch. The island page sets out how Boa Vista fits into Cape Verde.