Monte Gordo Natural Park

Overview

Monte Gordo Natural Park protects the humid mountain that fills the western half of São Nicolau, rising to the island’s highest point at 1,312 m. The park covers 950.11 hectares, the figure fixed by government decree in March 2022 when the original 2007 delimitation was rewritten to match the national coordinate system; older documents give 952 hectares or 9.52 km2. The boundary runs over the summit, so the park sits half in the municipality of Ribeira Brava and half in that of Tarrafal de São Nicolau.

What the park is for is altitude. The government’s tourism inventory describes it as the most representative sample of the island’s humid mountain ecosystems and one of the country’s most important rain-fed farming ecosystems, running from arid ground on the southern flank through sub-humid slopes on the north-northeast up to the summit. The same document calls it one of the few places in Cape Verde where the native vegetation can still be seen as it was before the land degradation that has affected most of the country, and credits it with the country’s largest surviving area of tortolho (Euphorbia tuckeyana).

That is a qualified claim, not a picture of untouched forest. Much of the tree cover on the high ground is planted pine, eucalyptus and cypress, and the park’s own ecology notes are blunt that introduced species have taken over large areas. The endemic plants live underneath it: Nauplius smithii, known locally as macela and found only in the Monte Gordo area, along with Echium stenosiphon, Aeonium gorgoneum and the purple or white Campanula jacobaea. Dragon trees grow here too, not only along field edges but inside the mixed woodland. BirdLife International lists the central range of São Nicolau as an Important Bird Area, the breeding place and type locality of Fea’s petrel (Pterodroma feae), with about 30 pairs estimated in 1998 surveys.

Practically, this is a park you walk into from a village. Cachaço, on the road between Ribeira Brava and Tarrafal de São Nicolau, has the signposted turning and the park building, and the summit is a half-day walk above it. For the island around it see São Nicolau, and for the archipelago, Cape Verde.

History

Monte Gordo is a young volcano, less than a million years old, and the shape of the island follows from it: a high western massif and a long dry tail east.

What happened to the forest

The vegetation you walk through is not what was here. The park’s own ecology notes describe heavy clearing for farmland, the erosion that followed, and then a reforestation campaign from 1930 that filled the high ground with introduced trees; poor management of those plantings, it says, let invasive species spread across large areas. Several surviving endemics are still cut for firewood, animal feed or traditional medicine, and the macela of Monte Gordo was listed as at risk partly because its branches were taken to make lamps for the São João festivities.

A bird thought to be gone

In February 1998 a small population of the Cape Verde warbler (Acrocephalus brevipennis), believed to have died out on São Nicolau since 1924, was rediscovered here, roughly eight pairs holding on in stands of cane. The same account records the endemic Cape Verde buzzard and kite as unreported from the island since the 1960s, and notes the telecommunications station since built on the summit.

Becoming a working park

Cape Verde’s protected areas law, Decreto-Lei 3/2003 of 24 February, created six categories of protected area and legally established 27 terrestrial sites totalling 37,176.91 hectares; Monte Gordo’s boundary followed in Decreto-Regulamentar 10/2007 of 3 September.

The most recent legal act is administrative rather than ecological. In March 2022 the government conceded that the 2007 coordinate list had been incomplete and produced a skewed shape on the map, republished the decree and restated the area as 950.11 hectares.

Visiting

Getting to Cachaço

Cachaço sits at about 700 m on the national road EN1-SN01 between Tarrafal de São Nicolau and Ribeira Brava, 5 km west of the island capital, at the north-eastern foot of Monte Gordo and partly inside the park. There is no bus. Transport between the two towns is by aluguer, the shared minibuses known nationally as yasi and the converted pickups known as hilux, which leave when they fill rather than to a timetable and stop anywhere along the route. Say Cachaço when you get in, and ask what time the last vehicle passes back.

The park building

The turning off the road in Cachaço is signposted for the Parque Natural Monte Gordo, and a cobbled road climbs from it to the park building 250 m in, at about 728 m, where exhibitions and printed information cover the park and staff answer questions. When the park ran its own website, last archived in 2009, the centre was called the Casa do Ambiente and offered free guides, maps, locally made crafts and a home-cooked lunch with a family living inside the park, booked two days ahead. That site is long gone and we found no current page giving hours, fees or contacts, so treat it as an indication and expect to turn up and ask.

Above the building the forestry road keeps climbing, and cars are allowed as far as the Casa Guarda at 963 m, a modern building usable as self-catering accommodation if booked in advance with the park administration. A gate above it closes the road to vehicles.

Walking to the summit

The standard route starts in Cachaço and takes about two and a half hours, following the forestry road up through what the São Nicolau walking guide rates as the finest woodland on the island. The path leaves the road at the Caldeirinha, a crater-like hollow at about 1,048 m, and climbs steeply through tortolho scrub onto the bare summit dome, which carries several antenna masts. Go down the same way: the guide has walked the alternative ridge line several times and calls it much worse, hard to follow and no faster.

The view is the reason people come. From the top, the guide says the eye reaches São Vicente and Santo Antão, and on the right day Pico da Antónia on Santiago and the volcano on Fogo, making this the one summit in Cape Verde from which all the islands can be picked out. The park’s own description was more measured: Raso, Branco, Santa Luzia, São Vicente and Santo Antão, with the peaks of Fogo and Santiago only on clear days.

Longer walks through the park

The through route from Cachaço over the shoulder of the mountain to Ribeira dos Calhaus takes roughly three and a half hours and crosses the Chã de Monte Gordo, a shallow basin north of the summit where passing trade-wind cloud drops extra rain and one farmstead still works fields and coffee plants. The tourism inventory singles out the Assomada de Ribeira de Calhaus, a small very windy plateau on the main route, as one of the finest viewpoints in the park.

Shorter options exist: the park laid out a recreational trail and a southern view loop, both starting and finishing at the park entrance, passing the community fields and tortolho stands before dropping into the Ribeira de Calhaus.

Tips

• Start early and accept the cloud. Monte Gordo usually lifts its bare crown above the trade-wind cloud, but the guide that maps these routes warns that cloud can close in within seconds and that ice-cold wind on the exposed summit demands respect. Carry water and a windproof layer even on a bright morning in Cachaço.
• Ask about a guide at the park building rather than navigating the western routes alone. Cape Verde’s protected areas strategy states that guide services here are provided by the environment directorate’s own team, and the park’s 2009 material described them as free.
• Do not improvise a descent on the south or west side. The walking guide is explicit that a wrong start out of Ribeira dos Calhaus can mean five hours of dangerous downhill wandering.
• Look at the dragon trees, and leave them alone. The Cape Verde dragon tree was separated from the Canarian species as Dracaena caboverdeana in 2017 and grows on only three islands. The densest stands are just east of the park at Fajã de Cima and Lombo Pelado, which the tourism inventory calls the largest population in the country while putting it at under 200 trees in scattered groups of two or three.
• Base yourself where the transport is. Ribeira Brava is 5 km east on the same road and Tarrafal de São Nicolau is on the far side of the mountain, so the practical shape is a bed in one of the two towns and an early aluguer up.

One thing to know before committing a day to this: nothing about the park is published live. No website, no phone number we could verify, no hours, no tariff. What is certain is the road, the signpost in Cachaço and the mountain above it.