Cabo Verde

Ten islands, 570 kilometres off the West African coast, built from volcanic rock and Atlantic wind and the music of people who had nowhere else to go. Morna - the Cape Verdean blues, the sound of saudade - emerged here, from the particular grief of an island people at the edge of an ocean. Sal and Boa Vista have the beaches and the resorts. Santiago has Cidade Velha, the first European colonial city in the tropics, now a ruin on a hillside above the sea. Sao Vicente has Mindelo, which has the bars, the musicians and the feeling that a great night is always about to begin.

Our guide is being written from the ground up, with the time this place deserves.

We are still gathering the notes that make a guide worth keeping: inter-island ferry routes, Mindelo's music venues, Cidade Velha's ruins and the cachupa recipes that differ enough between islands to justify eating it on all ten.