Scenically, it suggests something out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel: before me, spooky yet magical, is a sprawling Portuguese plantation house. Derelict and desolate, after years of neglect it is wrapped in the rampant vegetation that covers São Tomé island, in the Gulf of Guinea west of Africa.
Vines loop around the veranda's broken balustrade. Moss grows between stone lintels in roofless rooms. In the grounds is a curious retro swimming pool, cracked and empty, on a lawn reclaimed by jungle fern. Yet with a little concentration, I can picture it half a century ago in colonial times, when the Portuguese cocoa baron and his family ruled the roost, commandeering African workers on this bottle-green equatorial outcrop.
'If roça houses like this were restored as luxury hotels, tourists would come and stay, right?' asks Mario Almeida, who is helping me discover São Tomé. Without doubt they would. The colonists may have been brutes, but they had an eye for sublime spots on which to build their cool, thick-walled homes. From this property, Roça de Porto Alegre, the view is spectacular: in one direction, a cobalt bay and white inlets; in the other, the looming pinnacles of extinct volcanoes. Some neighbouring roças have already begun welcoming overnight guests as word of the hidden pleasures of São Tomé and its sister, Príncipe, spreads among European travellers. Little by little, these twin islands - Africa's second smallest country - are drawing a growing trickle of travellers with a passion for forgotten tropical outposts.
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