Voices of the Land | Women-Only Trip 50+ to São Tomé and Príncipe

In São Tomé, it is the women who hold the world in their hands.

They are the ones who come down the tracks at dawn with firewood on their heads, who climb to the plantations, who work the land, who fill the fruit baskets and who give the markets their colour and their voice. This expedition is built around them — and around a group of twelve women crossing the island at the leve-leve pace, between empty beaches, forest and waterfalls, to meet the people who live there.

Eight days in São Tomé, from 3 to 10 March 2027, with International Women's Day spent in exactly the right place: on Ilhéu das Rolas, on the Equator, one foot in each hemisphere, and a celebration dinner by the sea in the south of the island.

The group is accompanied by two women from start to finish: a Portuguese tour leader who travels with the group from Lisbon airport and handles all the logistics, and a São Toméan guide who opens the doors of local life with the closeness only someone from the island can offer.

Between the encounters and the conversations there is the whole island: Lagoa Azul and the centuries-old baobabs of the north, the golden sand beaches of Ilhéu das Rolas, Praia Piscina with its natural warm-water pools, Praia Inhame in the wild south, the mangroves at the mouth of the Malanza river explored by boat, the forest of Obô Natural Park and Lagoa Amélia high above, covered by a floating carpet of vegetation. Landscapes almost nobody has seen, because almost nobody comes.

And one principle runs through the whole trip: meals, accommodation and experiences favour women-run businesses. The money from this trip stays in the community, in the hands of the people who sustain it.

This is not a trip for watching. It is a trip for talking.

Flights depart from Lisbon; travellers coming from elsewhere connect through Lisbon and we can arrange it.