“There's a goat standing in the middle of the airport road like it's directing traffic, and nobody seems to mind.”

The flight from Lisbon drops you onto a runway that looks like it was drawn on the Sahara with a ruler. Boa Vista's Aristides Pereira airport is the size of a regional bus station, and the heat hits before the doors open. Outside, the transfer van rattles south along a road flanked by nothing — scrubby dunes, the occasional half-built wall, a goat. The island is roughly the shape of a fried egg and about as flat. After twenty minutes of this beautiful emptiness, the van turns toward the coast and you see it: a long, low resort complex the colour of terracotta, sitting on a sweep of pale sand so wide it looks fake. This is Praia de Lacacão, on Boa Vista's southern shore, and the Riu Touareg is essentially the only thing here. That's either the appeal or the warning, depending on what kind of traveler you are.

Boa Vista is the third-largest of Cape Verde's ten islands and one of the least developed. The capital, Sal Rei, sits on the northwest coast — a small town with a handful of restaurants, a colourful waterfront, and a pace of life that makes the Algarve look like Manhattan. Getting there from the hotel means a taxi or an organized excursion. There's no bus. There's no strip of bars down the road. You are here, and here is sand, wind, and the Atlantic.

Life inside the compound

The Riu Touareg runs on the logic of all large all-inclusives: keep everyone entertained enough that they don't notice they're in the middle of nowhere. Six pools handle this well. There's a main pool with a swim-up bar where an animation team leads aqua aerobics at 11 AM sharp, a quieter adults-only pool tucked behind the spa building, and a couple of smaller ones scattered through the grounds where you can actually hear yourself think. The resort is big — Moorish arches, tiled courtyards, palm-lined paths connecting the blocks. It takes a few wrong turns before you stop needing the map they hand you at check-in.

The rooms are mid-renovation, and it shows. Ours was clean — genuinely, spotlessly clean, tidied every day without fail — but the furniture carried that particular late-2000s resort aesthetic: dark wood headboard, beige walls, a CRT-era TV bracket even though the TV itself had been upgraded. The bathroom worked fine. The air conditioning worked fine. The balcony looked out over a courtyard where a gardener watered bougainvillea at 7 AM every morning with the dedication of a man performing a sacred ritual. I started setting my alarm to watch him. The renovation should bring things up to date, but honestly, the bones are solid. You're not here for the room. You're here for the beach, which is a three-minute walk through a gate at the back of the property and onto one of the most absurdly empty stretches of sand I've ever seen.

“The beach at Lacacão runs so far in both directions that you stop walking not because you've reached the end but because you've forgotten why you started.”

Food is the thing people worry about, and I get it — the internet is full of horror stories about all-inclusive buffets in Cape Verde. Two main buffets rotate themes: one night it's Mediterranean, another it's vaguely Asian, another it's a carvery. There are also a couple of sit-down restaurants you can book — an Italian and a steakhouse — which break up the buffet routine nicely. The food is fine. Not revelatory, not terrible. Standard international resort fare with occasional Cape Verdean touches: cachupa stew appeared twice during our week, and the grilled fish was always the best option at the buffet. My partner Reece ate everything with zero hesitation and zero consequences. So did I. The trick, as with any buffet, is to follow the locals on the staff — whatever they're eating at the end of their shift, eat that.

Evenings are surprisingly lively. The entertainment team puts on shows most nights — a Cape Verdean music night, a magic act of questionable skill but genuine enthusiasm, a fire show on the beach. The lobby bar fills up around 10 PM, and there's something pleasant about drinking a caipirinha while a cover band plays Cesária Évora songs slightly too fast. The spa offers massages and a hammam, though I'd recommend booking early in the week before the slots fill up.

Beyond the gate

The honest thing about Boa Vista is that there isn't a huge amount to do outside the resort. That's not a criticism — it's the island's character. You can book a quad bike tour across the dunes to the shipwreck at Praia de Atalanta, which is worth the dust in your teeth. A day trip to Sal Rei lets you wander the fish market, eat fresh tuna at a place called Morabeza near the pier, and buy grogue — the local sugarcane spirit — from a guy who bottles it in recycled water bottles. There are turtle-nesting excursions between June and October. But if you need a buzzing nightlife scene or a dozen restaurant options within walking distance, Boa Vista will feel quiet. Beautifully, stubbornly quiet.

On the last morning, the transfer van comes early. The beach is empty except for a couple of ghost crabs and a fisherman dragging a wooden boat toward the waterline. The wind has shifted overnight — it comes off the desert now instead of the ocean, and the sand moves across the road in low, fast ribbons. Boa Vista doesn't ask you to come back. It doesn't seem to care either way. The goat is still on the airport road. It has not moved.

Rooms at the Riu Touareg start around 104 US$ per night for two people, all-inclusive — drinks, meals, entertainment, and that beach included. For a week of doing very little in a place that rewards doing very little, that's a fair deal.