Sal Rei is the gateway to Boa Vista, the wildest and most desert-like island of beach-holiday Cape Verde. It is a colourful, quiet town with colonial charm in the north-west of the island: brightly painted houses, a central square with its church, cobbled streets and a seafront lined with fishing boats. Far from the bustle of Santa Maria, it offers a more relaxed and authentic atmosphere, with some of the most impressive beaches in the Atlantic right on its doorstep.
Boa Vista is an island of extreme contrasts: dunes of sand blown in from the Sahara, a small desert (Viana), untouched beaches stretching for dozens of kilometres, palm oases and a coastline strewn with shipwrecks, such as the famous Cabo Santa Maria. Its warm waters are a sanctuary for sea turtles, which nest on its beaches, and a migration route for humpback whales. Facing Sal Rei, the ilhéu de Sal Rei holds the ruins of a colonial fort.
This guide covers Sal Rei and Boa Vista with a practical eye: the town and its daily life, the islet and its fort, excursions through the dunes and to the shipwrecks, the big beaches, turtle and whale watching, and how to get around a large, sandy island. It is the ideal destination for anyone looking for spectacular beaches and wild nature with fewer people.
Like the rest of Boa Vista, Sal Rei grew up around the salt trade: in the 18th century the island was a major producer, and its main port took the name 'Sal Rei' (the 'king's salt'). To protect the business from pirate attacks, a fort was built on the islet facing the town. Boa Vista also lived off textiles and served as a port of call for ships, until droughts and decline left it forgotten. The island was reborn with tourism from the 2000s onwards, when its beaches and dunes turned it, together with Sal, into one of the country's great sun-and-beach destinations. Its full story 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) →A local guide tells you in half an hour what no sign at the site will ever explain. We look ours up on Civitatis: guided in Spanish and booked online with no fuss. They have 8 activities in Sal Rei Boa Vista. Have a look below: tap any of them to see them all.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Boa Vista is the easternmost island of Cape Verde, the closest to the African coast and one of the oldest in the archipelago in geological terms. Its name, 'Boa Vista' ('good view'), is traditionally said to come from the cry of relief of sailors who, after long Atlantic crossings, finally sighted land on this flat, sandy island. It was one of the first islands in the archipelago to be known and visited by the Portuguese in the 15th century.
Like Sal, Boa Vista is a desert island, battered by the wind from the Sahara, which brings the sand of its famous dunes, and short of water. Its terrain is gentle, without the big mountains of the southern or northern islands, and its coastline alternates endless beaches with stretches of reefs and dangerous currents that caused many shipwrecks over the centuries. That mix of dryness and isolation shaped its history.
For a long time the island was thinly populated and stayed on the sidelines of the major colonial events, which were centred on Santiago. But it had one resource that, at a certain point, would make it valuable: salt, the same salt that brought wealth and a name to neighbouring Sal, and that was also produced in the salt pans of Boa Vista.
In the 18th century, Boa Vista boomed thanks to salt production. The island became a major producer and exporter, and its main port, in the northwest, took a name that reveals that origin: 'Sal Rei', meaning 'the king's salt', a reference to the Crown's monopoly on, or interest in, this valuable product. Salt was a strategic commodity back then, essential for preserving meat and fish, and its trade kept ships from several nations busy.
Sal Rei grew into the island's urban centre and port, with its colonial houses, its church and its commercial life. The sheltered bay and the nearby salt pans made the place attractive, but also vulnerable: the salt wealth drew the pirates and privateers who swarmed the Atlantic routes. Exposed and poorly defended, Boa Vista suffered raids and looting.
To protect the port and its trade, a fortification was built on the islet just opposite Sal Rei: the Forte Duque de Bragança, on the ilhéu de Sal Rei. From the islet, cannons could defend the bay against attack. That fort, now in ruins, is the most visible reminder of the time when salt made Sal Rei a prosperous and contested place.
Boa Vista's prosperity didn't last. As in the rest of Cape Verde, salt production gradually declined, and the island tried other activities, such as farming and textiles, without any lasting success. Like the whole archipelago, Boa Vista suffered terribly from the periodic droughts that struck Cape Verde, causing famines that decimated the population and pushed people into mass emigration, leaving the island ever emptier and more forgotten.
Boa Vista's coast kept claiming ships. Its treacherous currents and shallow, hard-to-spot coral reefs turned its waters into a graveyard of shipwrecks over the centuries. The most famous is the Spanish cargo ship Cabo Santa Maria, which ran aground on 1 September 1968 on a beach in the north. Its rusting hulk is still there, now a symbol of the island and a reminder of its dangerous relationship with the sea.
For much of the 20th century, Boa Vista was one of the poorest and most isolated islands in Cape Verde, with Sal Rei reduced to a quiet fishing village. When the country became independent in 1975, the island was a marginal territory, wild and beautiful but with hardly any economy. Its big transformation, like that of neighbouring Sal, was still to come, and it would come from the same place: tourism.
From the 2000s onwards, Boa Vista went through a radical transformation driven by tourism, a little later than Sal but with just as deep an impact. What had been a drawback for centuries (the dryness, the isolation, the empty beaches) turned out to be a treasure for sun-and-beach tourism. The building of an international airport (now Aristides Pereira, opened in the late 2000s) opened the island to direct charter flights from Europe.
All-inclusive resorts sprang up on the island's big beaches, many of them run by international chains, and Boa Vista joined Sal as one of Cape Verde's two major beach destinations. The island specialised in nature and relaxation: its miles of unspoilt beach, its Sahara dunes, its turtles and whales and its laid-back atmosphere set it apart from livelier Sal.
That development brought jobs and modernisation, but also the usual challenges: dependence on foreign operators, pressure on scarce resources (desalinated water, energy) and the balance between growth and protecting a fragile, valuable natural environment, above all the sea turtles, which have made Boa Vista one of their great sanctuaries worldwide.
Today, Sal Rei is a small, charming capital that bridges two worlds: traditional Boa Vista, with its fishermen, colonial houses and unhurried pace, and the tourist island of resorts, dunes and excursions. The town keeps its authentic, multicultural feel, with a sizeable Italian community, and remains the natural base for exploring the wildest island of beach-holiday Cape Verde.
The ilhéu de Sal Rei, with the ruins of its fort, recalls the island's salt-trading and defensive past; the wreck of the Cabo Santa Maria, the historic dangers of its coast; and the turtles and whales, the natural wealth the island now tries to protect and make the most of. In just a few decades, Boa Vista has gone from a poor, forgotten island to a tourist destination, without entirely losing its wild character and its rugged beauty.
Exploring Sal Rei and its island is a glimpse into that story of contrasts: the salt that made it prosperous and contested, the shipwrecks and droughts that brought it down, and the tourism that has brought it back to life. With its endless beaches, its Sahara dunes and its waters full of life, Boa Vista today shows the most natural and peaceful side of Cape Verde, with Sal Rei as its colourful colonial soul.
