It's fair to say that the island of Sal on Cape Verde receives a mixed press. Certainly the Bradt guide doesn't mince words. "The arrival ... on an international flight is a deliciously depressing descent ... relentlessly brown and featureless ... Disembarking ... you will gaze at the rocky plains in puzzlement, trying to remember why you decided to come."
Still, it is where trips to the Cape Verde archipelago - 10 islands 400 or so miles off the coast of Senegal in West Africa - tend to begin and end for us Brits.
Sal is one of only two Cape Verde islands you can fly to direct from London, and most visitors come on package tours, lured by the promise of winter sun rather than pleasing scenery. I can confirm that it is indeed a bleak and uninspiring landscape that greets visitors after the five-and-a-half hour flight from Gatwick; dusty plains as far as the eye can see, dotted with skeletons of unfinished buildings - the result of half-finished projects started by foreign investors who ran out of money.
On the trip from the airport to the coastal resort of Santa Maria our attention is particularly drawn to a massive development called Cotton Bay, where a 36-hole golf course as well as a shopping centre, spa and casino are planned. There is local concern about development across Cape Verde apparently. Lack of fresh water is an issue on all the islands. Nearly all the water on Sal, (Portuguese for salt) for example, comes from desalination plants.
In the run up to this trip, a number of people inform me that the Manchester United footballer Nani is from Cape Verde. But, in common with many Cape Verdeans, it turns out he only spent his early childhood there; his family emigrated to Portugal. Cape Verde was a Portuguese colony until it gained independence in 1975.
When a friend suggested we go walking there this admittedly slight piece of information did at least give me something to navigate by - the sorry truth being that I hadn't actually heard of Cape Verde before then.
A general lack of enthusiasm about Sal is more than matched, however, by glittering reports about the other islands. Our holiday is put together by the small and skilled company Archipelago Cape Verde, who very much view Sal as a kicking-off point.
The day we arrive on Sal my friend Stuart and I will fly on to Santiago, the largest and most populated of the islands. Santiago is African in culture, with craggy mountains and abundant agriculture. There is an ancient capital, Cidade Velha, and a modern one, Praia (where, as it happens, Nani was born).
Three days later we will move on to Fogo, known as the "island of fire" because although all Cape Verde's islands are volcanic in origin, Fogo boasts a still-active volcano, and a climb to the crater is a much recommended holiday highlight.
We have six hours to while away in Sal on the way out. Time enough for a walk along some of the miles of the admittedly picture-perfect beach at Santa Maria, where locals teach the tourists to kitesurf and fishermen catch huge marlin and swordfish and immigrant African vendors crouch at the end of sun loungers doggedly and adeptly fastening hippy jewellery around pale necks and wrists. We have supper at the beach restaurant, La Papaya, the first of many very good meals in Cape Verde. Then it's back to the airport.
Forty five minutes later we arrive in Santiago, where we are met by Eugenio, who was born on the nearby island of Brava and then raised in the US. More Cape Verdeans now live in the US (Boston mostly) and abroad than on Cape Verde he tells us, before delivering us to the Quinta Montanha hotel high up in the middle of the island.
Cape Verdeans are very proud of their islands and they're right to be - theirs is, for the most part, a special and unspoilt destination. The interior of Santiago is green and mountainous, a landscape of peaks and fertile valleys with banana plantations and papaya trees. The view from our room across the verdant plots of fruit and vegetables is beautiful.
We spend a day strolling fairly randomly through the local countryside to get acclimatised. We try a walk to the nearest village but get lost and end up on small paths, coming upon several small communities and then a mass of activity around a water hole, where kids and adults gather with big plastic containers and chat and joke and show off for our benefit.
A young man gallops past on a donkey, body at full tilt, waving and smiling as he goes. Kids wave and ask for money - but not terribly seriously - and we take pictures of kingfishers, roosters and donkeys and the general rural lushness.
Supper at the hotel is lovely - locals apparently come up to the Quinta de Montanha to eat because the food is famously good and the meat, fruit and vegetables are all sourced locally (unlike on Sal, where the terrain means that everything has to be imported).
Another day Eugenio picks us up early for a walk that begins close to the market town of Assomada.
We buy spicy sausage sandwiches for lunch, then head off for a sometimes steep walk down into a glorious valley. We meet a woman carrying a big parcel on her head. Eugenio makes her take it off so we can feel its not insignificant weight. She is 72 and walks barefoot.
The scenery is extraordinary - lush and abundant plots of papaya, mangoes, pineapples. We eat our sausage sandwiches in a village clearing and watch the children coming back from school. Local children often have to go to school in shifts because there simply aren't enough teachers in Cape Verde to go around. I watch two boys walking together up hill with their rucksacks to greet the donkey in their yard. We wave and they smile.
We walk through a cluster of houses to a tiny bar, decorated with a big hanging bunch of bananas and a motorbike. The family opposite, who seem to have an enormous turkey sharing their living space, invite us to "come and relax" at their place.
The houses are painted sharp cooling shades of turquoise and mint, and against the jungle green and dark wood the colours are stunning.
On the way back up we spot vast barrels of the home brew "grogue" - sugar-cane sap left to ferment and then sent for sale in Assomada. We end our day and our stay on a terrace above a black beach on the north coast watching local youngsters play football.
The flight to Fogo from Santiago takes just 20 minutes. We are met in the coastal town of Sao Felipe by driver Albino and guide Helder and we immediately start the long slow climb to the volcanic Pico do Fogo, the highest mountain on Cape Verde at 2,829m.
The road - in dire need of repair - leads to two villages high in the Cha das Caldeiras (plain of craters) area in the shadow of Pico do Fogo. On the way up we stop to take in the extraordinary view - a black and grainy moonscape with great fields of lava from when the volcano last erupted, in 1995, and also to buy souvenirs made out of the lava by local children.
We are staying at the Pousada Pedro Brabo bed and breakfast. Owned by a Frenchman and built from lava brick, it has a pretty courtyard where more fantastic food is served.
In the afternoon we take a walk up to a smaller volcano. Helder invites us to - carefully - put our hands in the holes and the heat is astonishing. We walk past fig trees, okra and pomegranate as well as grapevines growing in the rich and fertile lava ash. The locals work and own the land and the wine that they produce here is very good.
Next morning we are up at 5.30am to be ready to start the trek up to the main crater at 6.30 - before it gets too hot. Charmingly, we have been left a flask of coffee and a tray of breakfast food in our room. It all begins quite promisingly but sadly - and somewhat embarrassingly - I start to find the climb difficult: as we ascend in thinner and thinner air, my breathing becomes increasingly laboured. I realise after a while that I am not especially enjoying myself, and am holding up Stuart and Helder, who seem not to be feeling any ill effects at all.
As it will turn out they both bound up in two hours (it can take people up to four) and run - yes, run - down again in about 20 minutes. Running is apparently the only way to descend, jogging knee-deep in the volcanic ash that forms a big sooty cushion - as Stuart finds when he loses his hat, falls and tumbles a few yards, filling every orifice with black grains as he goes.
Meanwhile I wander sedately back to the village in the distance, back to the children who congregate outside our room, softly requesting bon-bons. I give them pens and a tin of cashews and Pringles and they ask my name which they translate charmingly as "Woofla".
All the Caldeiras people are descendents of a mad old French duke who made Fogo his home in the 1870s, which explains why they are light-skinned and in some cases blond.
Later we will visit the Casa de Memoria - a local museum - and watch a fascinating film of news coverage of the Pico do Fogo eruption of 1995.
It is stunning to see the place where we have just stayed being washed over by red molten rivers of heat. There is amazing footage of locals carrying bed frames, mattresses, all their possessions, on their heads down steep hills, closely followed by creeping lava. It was a month before the 15cm-an-hour flow stopped.
No one died but people with houses and land in the path of the eruption lost everything, and it is very moving to watch it all being engulfed. Where once were fields of green there are now dark walls of lava. The government provided new homes further down in the southernmost slopes, but many people moved back up once things had cooled a little.
Back in Sao Felipe our new hotel, the Xaguate, has a pool and a room with a balcony and a sea view. It is very comfortable and in a majestic position above town. Our final walk is short and pretty. We drive to a delightful village called Sao Laurenco on the outskirts of the city and walk back to Sao Felipe along a cobbled path through further rural idyll, plots of strawberries, figs, plums, cabbages, potatoes, tomatoes, plus pigs, roosters and goats, and people working the fields and waving.
The following day the long slow journey home begins. We fly to Santiago and then to Sal and then drive to the Hotel Morabeza for a final night before our flight to Gatwick.
Back in Sal the magic of Cape Verde once again pales a little. Suddenly, at dinner, we are surrounded by English voices loudly complaining about the food (ours was fine) and demanding and receiving complimentary wine.
We wake early for a trip to the post office along one of the two main streets. I also buy a very pretty vase in the local arts centre. The streets of Santa Maria are engaging and the locals friendly.
Yes, Cape Verdeans are right to be proud of their islands, and you hope tourism and the jobs it provides will do right by them. And if Sal and its golf course make you a bit on edge, hop to another island, where life is simple in the best possible way, the climate is perfect and the scenery is stunning.
Essentials
A seven-night trip to the Cape Verde islands with Archipelago Cape Verde costs from £1,295, based on two sharing, including return flights from Gatwick, internal flights to Santiago and Fogo islands and back to Sal, airport transfers, seven nights' accommodation with breakfast and two full-day guided walks with picnic lunches. For more information contact: 017687 75684; archipelagocapeverde.com.