Praia de Santa Mónica is the very definition of a wild, paradise beach: endless miles of fine white sand, clear turquoise water and absolutely nothing else. No resorts, no rows of umbrellas, no crowds: just the sea, the sand and the wind, in the southwest of Boa Vista island. It is one of the longest beaches in the Atlantic and, for many travellers, the most impressive in all of Cape Verde, a place where the vastness and solitude are almost overwhelming.
Its name is a nod to the famous Santa Monica in California, but here there is no pier and no promenade: it is nature in its purest form. The beach is part of an untouched stretch of coast that runs for about 18 kilometres, and in season it becomes one of the major nesting sites of the loggerhead turtle, one of Boa Vista's natural treasures. The contrast between the dazzling white sand, the turquoise sea and the blue sky is stunningly beautiful.
This guide covers Praia de Santa Mónica from a practical angle: what this untouched beach is like, how to get there along Boa Vista's sand tracks, what precautions to take (wind, currents, lack of services), when you can see turtles and how to combine the visit with the rest of the island. It is a destination for anyone looking for the wildest, most spectacular beach in Cape Verde, far from everything.
Praia de Santa Mónica is, above all, a natural phenomenon: an untouched stretch of coast in the southwest of Boa Vista, an island that for centuries was poor and sparsely populated and whose beaches stayed intact until tourism arrived. Its name evokes the Californian beach, a symbol of sand and sun. Today it is both a tourist attraction —one of the most photographed in the country— and a protected sanctuary for sea turtles, which nest in its sand between July and October. Its story is intertwined with that of Boa Vista and with turtle conservation in Cape Verde. The full context is told on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The flat eastern islands, golden with salt and dunes: they first lived off the salt in their craters, and today off beach tourism, kitesurfing and the turtles that nest in their sand.
Read the history of Sal and Boa Vista (the sand islands) →They depart from Pedra De Lume, 86 km away. If you book from this link we earn a commission and you pay no more.
No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Praia de Santa Mónica has no 'history' in the sense of dates and famous figures. Its history is geological and natural, and it is measured in millennia. The beach is the result of wind and sea working tirelessly on the south-west coast of Boa Vista, the easternmost island of Cape Verde and one of the oldest. Over thousands of years, Atlantic currents and the trade winds have laid down and shaped a huge stretch of fine white sand here, creating one of the longest beaches on the Atlantic Ocean.
Some of Boa Vista's sand, like the sand of its famous dunes, even comes from the Sahara Desert, about 500 kilometres to the east, carried by the harmattan wind over generations. Mixed with sand of marine and coral origin, it forms the brilliant white blanket that sets Santa Mónica and the island's other great beaches apart. The result is a landscape of extreme beauty on an unusual scale: kilometre after kilometre of unbroken sand.
For centuries this coast belonged to a poor, dry and thinly populated island, and nobody used or valued its beaches. That long neglect is exactly what allowed Santa Mónica to reach the present day untouched: while the rest of the world built up its coastlines, Boa Vista's most spectacular beach stayed intact, waiting for its moment.
The name 'Santa Mónica' is a modern borrowing, a nod to the famous Santa Monica beach in California (United States), a worldwide symbol of sand, sun and beach life. It's an evocative name that sums up the ambition to turn this untouched coast into a top beach destination. Unlike its Californian namesake, though, the Cape Verdean Santa Mónica has no pier, no promenade and no crowds: it is the wild, lonely flip side.
The beach is part of the story of Boa Vista itself, an island tied for centuries to salt, textiles and shipwrecks, and above all to the harsh droughts and famines that struck the whole of Cape Verde and left the island poor and emptied of people. Its capital, Sal Rei, was little more than a quiet fishing port, and the south of the island, where Santa Mónica lies, was almost uninhabited, with old settlements such as Povoação Velha, the island's first village.
That forgotten Boa Vista, with almost no economy or infrastructure, kept its nature intact well into the 21st century. Turtles kept nesting undisturbed on its beaches, the Saharan dunes kept moving across the interior, and the great sands of the south, like Santa Mónica, still belonged to the gulls and the wind. All of that would change when tourism arrived.
One of the most important chapters in the natural history of Santa Mónica and Boa Vista belongs to the sea turtles. The untouched beaches in the south of the island, Santa Mónica among them, are some of the largest nesting sites in the world for the loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta). Every year between July and October, thousands of females come up onto the sand at night to lay their eggs, one of the great natural spectacles of the Atlantic.
For a long time this wealth was under threat. Turtles were caught to be eaten and their products sold. Later came pressure from tourist development and from light pollution, which confuses the hatchlings because they follow the light on the horizon to reach the sea. Together these put Boa Vista's turtle populations at risk, and conservation became urgent.
In response, protection projects such as BIOS.CV and other organisations began patrolling the beaches, protecting nests, carrying out research and educating both local people and tourists. Night-time turtle-watching trips were regulated under strict rules, and poaching was tackled. Thanks to these efforts, Boa Vista's turtles have become a symbol of conservation in Cape Verde and a responsible tourist attraction, and Santa Mónica has become one of their key stages.
From the 2000s, as tourism took off on Boa Vista, Santa Mónica went from an ignored beach to one of the island's top attractions and one of the most widely shared images of Cape Verde. The new international airport and the large resorts on the island's south coast brought travellers within reach of this once inaccessible corner, and 4x4 excursions began taking tourists out across its endless sand.
Since then the challenge has been to balance two things: making the most of the beach's huge appeal to visitors while keeping its untouched character and its role as a turtle sanctuary. Unlike many other coasts, Santa Mónica has stayed largely free of buildings on the sand itself, which protects its scenic and ecological value, although some large resorts went up on nearby stretches of the south coast.
Today Santa Mónica captures a tension typical of modern Cape Verde: a country that has found its main economic engine in tourism and must, at the same time, look after the natural treasures that draw those tourists. The beach is a magnet for visitors, but it is also a fragile ecosystem that needs protecting, especially during turtle season.
For many travellers, today's Praia de Santa Mónica is the most impressive beach in Cape Verde and one of the most beautiful on the Atlantic. It offers kilometres of empty white sand, turquoise water and a feeling of vastness and solitude that has become rare in the world. It's a place to take in the view and seek adventure rather than comfort. You won't find resort-beach facilities here, but the natural beauty is hard to match.
Its story isn't one of centuries and battles. It is the story of nature and its protection: the wind and sea that formed it, the turtles that choose it to carry on their species, and the delicate balance between tourism and conservation that defines its present. A visit makes it clear that Boa Vista's greatest treasure, and that of much of Cape Verde, is the very thing once seen as its curse: its wild, untamed nature.
For travellers looking for something real and grand, Santa Mónica is the reward. You can walk alone along a beach that seems to go on forever, watch turtles nest under a starry sky, and feel the Saharan wind and the roar of the Atlantic. This is Cape Verde at its purest, the one that existed long before the resorts and that, with care, will still exist long after them: a fragile piece of paradise at the far edge of the Atlantic world.
