No Stress: Cabo Verde

Some places demand to be seen. Others persuade you to stop looking quite so hard.

Sal, in Cabo Verde, was the latter: volcanic, salt-scoured and spare, an island of tradewinds, long horizons and enough light to make ambition seem faintly ridiculous.

My short piece “No Stress” appears in the Autumn 2026 issue of Travel Africa, as part of its Ideas Bank on less conventional African journeys. It’s about the things that stayed with me after leaving Sal: the fleeting blue light at Buracona, nurse sharks moving through warm shallows, loggerhead turtles coming ashore—and an island that seems to operate according to a different understanding of time.

Another small dispatch from Africa, and another reminder of why I keep travelling and writing about the places that resist easy description.