Things to Do in Elobey Islands

Colonial tramway ruins walk

You can trace the 1900s German cocoa tramway for about three kilometers through Grande's interior, ducking under silk-cotton branches and stepping over rails half-buried in leaf mould. Butterflies the size of your palm sip at the rust, and every so often a monitor the length of your arm scuttles off the track with claws that click on the iron. Keep walking.

Elobey Chico circumnavigation by pirogue

A narrow wooden pirogue with a puttering 15-hp Yamaha will lap the smaller island in forty minutes, giving you views of scarlet mangrove roots and the moment when flying fish skim past your elbow like thrown knives. The helmsman tends to cut the engine mid-channel so you can hear the slap of waves against the hull and the distant call of palm-nut vultures overhead. Pure magic.

Abandoned warehouse crane climb

The 1930s German crane at the main pier still has its ladder, rungs sticky with salt and seagull droppings. From the top you look straight down into water so clear you can see rust flakes settle on the sandy bottom. The breeze up there smells simultaneously of diesel, drying squid and the faint sweetness of cacao that once poured out of these hoppers. Climb carefully.

Mangrove oyster harvest at low tide

When the tide drops, local women wade knee-deep with machetes to chip golf-ball-sized oysters off the mangrove trunks. The shells hiss as they open and the meat tastes like a mouthful of cold seawater with a squeeze of lime. You're welcome to tag along, your shins soon scratched by pneumatophores and the mud stinking agreeably of sulphur. Tastes alive.

Bioluminescent plankton night swim

On moonless nights the channel between Grande and Chico lights up when you move. Every stroke sends blue sparks down your arms and the silhouette of your kicking legs glows like neon tubing. The water is blood-warm, and tiny silver fry bounce off your chest feeling like thrown rice grains. Jump in.

Casa de Huespedes Marita, a clapboard house near the pier where the owner burns eucalyptus leaves against mosquitoes and hammocks come with surprisingly unstained netting

Camping under the palms on Playa Norte - ask the village chief first and bring your own fresh water because the well is brackish

The old customs warehouse loft, now unofficially rentable. Sheets smell of tar paper but sunrise over the estuary pours straight through the broken roof

Señor David's back-room, two single beds under a ceiling fan that clicks like playing cards. Shared bucket shower but the family cooks excellent barracuda

Hammock space on the covered veranda of the health post - nurses tolerate travelers if you donate a bar of soap and keep voices down after ten

Back-deck of the weekly supply ship. Captains sometimes allow sleepers for a small fee, engine vibration rocks you to sleep and the galley coffee tastes of chicory