The Blue Eye and Pedra de Lume – Sal's Two Natural Sights, and When They Actually Work

Almost every island tour on Sal stops at the same two places: the Blue Eye at Buracona in the north-west, and the flooded volcanic crater at Pedra de Lume in the east. They sit about 20 kilometres apart on an island that is under 30 kilometres long, so seeing both in a morning is easy.

What is not easy is seeing them well. One of them is only worth the trip inside a narrow window of the day. The other works at any hour but asks you to bring something most visitors forget.

The Blue Eye exists for about two hours a day

Buracona is a stretch of black lava coast with a collapsed cave in it. Sunlight enters through a hole in the rock, hits the water inside, and the pool lights up an improbable electric blue. That is the whole phenomenon, and it depends entirely on the sun being high enough to reach through the opening.

The window is roughly 11 am to 1 pm. Outside it – early morning, late afternoon, or on a heavily overcast day – you are looking at a dark hole in a rock. Nothing is broken and nobody has lied to you; the light simply is not there.

This is the single most useful thing to check before you book. A tour that reaches Buracona at 9:30 am or at 4 pm is not a worse tour in any other respect, but it will not show you the thing the photographs show. Ask for the running order, not just the list of stops.

Entry to the site is €3, and it is free for children and for Cape Verdean nationals and residents with ID. There is a restaurant, toilets and a souvenir stall. Next to the cave is a natural pool in the lava, deep enough to swim in when the sea is calm – and firmly not when it is not. The Atlantic comes in hard on this coast, and the rock is sharp and slippery. If the swell is up, the pool is for looking at.

Pedra de Lume is a salt lake inside a volcano

The crater at Pedra de Lume is the older story of the two. Salt was worked here commercially from the end of the eighteenth century, and a tunnel was cut through the crater wall in 1804 so that the salt could be carried out to the coast instead of hauled over the rim. At its height the operation shipped thousands of tonnes a year. Large-scale extraction stopped decades ago and only a little salt is worked today, and what is left is the crater, the wooden salt pans and a lake so saline you cannot sink in it.

You float. Not “float easily” – you float the way a cork does, with your feet coming up whether you want them to or not. It is a strange twenty minutes and it is the reason the place is on every itinerary.

Three practical things, in order of how often people get them wrong:

• Rinse afterwards. There are showers on site. Salt that dries on skin itches for hours, and it will ruin sunglasses and a phone screen.
• No shaving, no fresh scratches. The water finds every one of them.
• Bring cash. There is an entrance fee at the gate – reported at €5 to €6 – and cards are not taken.

The Salinas are on Cape Verde’s tentative list for UNESCO World Heritage, which tells you something about how the country sees the site and nothing at all about how busy it will be at eleven in the morning.

The third stop, and why the tours bundle them

Almost nobody sells the Blue Eye on its own. The standard half-day pairs it with Pedra de Lume and with Shark Bay on the east coast, where juvenile lemon sharks come into water that is barely knee-deep. The all-inclusive Shark Bay, Salt Lake and Blue Eye tour is the most-booked version – €45, four hours, 4.8 stars from 2,948 reviews – and it adds the Terra Boa mirage, a stretch of flat plain where the road ahead appears to be under water.

If you want less of a day, the Pedra de Lume and Shark Bay half-day runs three hours from €29 and skips Buracona entirely – which is the honest choice if your slot falls outside the light window anyway.

At the other end, the full-day island tour with a certified local guide takes seven hours from €35 and is the most-reviewed thing on the island by some distance: 4.8 stars from 4,287 reviews. The extra hours buy Espargos, Palmeira and the villages, not more time at the two sights.

There is a fourth route that people overlook. An off-road buggy tour from €53 covers the same three stops and includes the admission to all of them – Shark Bay, Pedra de Lume and Buracona – in the price. The operator lists it as unsuitable for children under four, for pregnant women and for anyone with back problems, and you need a driving licence to take the wheel. Sal’s interior tracks are corrugated stone, and the ride is not gentle.

There are 55 island tours in total on this island, from €27, and the great majority visit exactly these stops in a different order and a different vehicle.

When to skip them

If you are on Sal for a week and the forecast gives you one grey, windy day, spend it somewhere else. The Blue Eye needs sun, the lava pool needs a calm sea, and the crater in flat light is a brown bowl. Both sights reward a clear day at midday, and on this island clear days are not scarce.

And if the crater is your only reason for coming, consider the wellness version at Pedra de Lume – four and a half hours from €52, built around the salt water rather than around getting to the next stop on time. It is one of the few itineraries on the island that treat the lake as a destination instead of a photo opportunity.