Perfection Is a Myth, but This Obscure Island Comes Close
Perfection is tourism’s stock-in-trade. What tourism loves to sell, and what as consumers we’re happy to buy into, is the idea of a pristine environment untarnished by ugliness or strife. We still gaze lovingly at the photo cropped to remove all suggestion of functionalism and modernity; the sea turned a shade of lapis lazuli by the application of a filter. But something has changed: accustomed to Instagram’s currency of idyllic places, we’ve learned that such images are likely to be false. If we did ever happen to stumble on paradise we’d surely be too cynical and suspicious to recognize it.
The thing about the planet’s last “pure and natural” places is that they’re usually tricky to get to. The journey to Príncipe, smaller and remoter of the two islands which together make up the Democratic Republic of Sao Tomé and Príncipe, involves a six-hour flight from Lisbon (there’s no other way) and a layover in Sao Tomé before the half-hour connecting flight the following morning.
It had been a long while since I'd been so excited by the idea of getting on a plane. Mainly because this one was a 12-seater turbo-prop with plush leather seats and a cabin so small that you could see into the cockpit as the pilot reached above him to activate the “fasten seatbelt” sign. The engines roared, the propellers whirred so fast they were invisible. And within seconds we were up aloft, whizzing northwards in a giant dragonfly. Just over there beyond the clouds was the city of Libreville, capital of Gabon. Somewhere far up ahead, lay the coast of Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon. And just in front, looming up now as we made our final descent, a ragged-edged scrap of emerald green set in a crystal sea, adorned with beaches of honey-colored sand.