Things to Do in Equatorial Guinea in July

Pico Basile towers 3,011 m (9,879 ft) above Malabo. July's cooler temperatures and heavy cloud cover make the climb far more bearable than in hotter months. The round-trip covers roughly 12 km (7.5 miles) with 1,200 m (3,937 ft) of gain. Operators also run vehicle-assisted options, shortening the walk to the final push above 2,000 m (6,562 ft). Up there, the air carries wet moss and volcanic soil. Drill monkeys crash through understory. Bioko red colobus monkeys, found nowhere else, swing through canopy so dense the forest floor lives in permanent twilight. You will get muddy. Trails are slippery. Fern-covered ground squelches underfoot. Waterproof boots are essential. The reward comes when clouds part. You see straight down to the Bight of Biafra, the coastline curving below like a pencil line on blue-green water.

Malabo's compact centre can absorb a full morning regardless of weather. July's overcast skies make walking the streets more comfortable than the dry-season glare. Start at the Catedral de Santa Isabel. Its red-and-white neo-Gothic facade looks lifted from a Spanish provincial town and dropped onto the equator. Work through the narrow streets behind the waterfront toward the Mercado Central. The market is loud and close-quartered. The smell of smoked fish and palm oil mixes with the sharp sweetness of ripe papaya stacked in pyramids on wooden tables. Vendors sell everything from dried chili peppers and cassava flour to hand-carved Fang masks and second-hand clothes. The National Museum of Equatorial Guinea sits nearby. It holds a modest but worthwhile collection of Bubi and Fang cultural objects, colonial-era maps, and exhibits tracing the country's path from Spanish colony to independence. The whole circuit takes about three hours at a slow pace. When the afternoon rain hits, duck into one of the local eateries near the market for a bowl of pepesup. This peppery fish soup is the closest thing this country has to a national dish. The broth is sharp with scotch bonnet and thickened with chunks of cassava.

Bioko Island was once one of the world's great cacao producers. Finca Sampaka, a plantation founded in the early 1900s about fifteen minutes by taxi south of central Malabo, is the place where that history is still alive and working. The tour follows the full arc from tree to bar. You walk rows of cacao trees heavy with fat ridged pods that split open to reveal the white mucilaginous pulp surrounding the beans. Watch the fermentation boxes where the raw beans sit for days developing their characteristic tang. Stand over the drying racks where the beans slowly darken from pale lavender to deep brown in the humid air. The smell at the roasting stage is extraordinary. It is a rich, bitter-sweet cloud that hangs in the processing shed like something solid. July's overcast skies and cooler air make the plantation walk comfortable. Most of the tasting and processing happens under cover, so an afternoon downpour does not disrupt the experience. This is one of the few activities in Equatorial Guinea that works better in the wet season than the dry.

The road south from Luba toward Ureka passes through some of the densest primary rainforest left in West Africa. In July the waterfalls along this stretch are at their most powerful. The Ureka waterfalls, fed by months of accumulated rainfall, thunder down volcanic rock faces stained orange and green with mineral deposits and moss. The spray hits you from thirty metres away. It is cold and sharp against the warm humid air. The forest around the falls is home to drills, forest elephants on rare occasion, and a density of birdlife that makes the canopy sound like a badly tuned orchestra. Getting here requires a full day and a vehicle capable of handling the muddy track south of Luba, which in July is at its most challenging. The remoteness is part of the draw. You will likely have the waterfalls entirely to yourself, standing on volcanic boulders while the sound of the falls erases everything else. Ureka village itself, population under a hundred, sits on the coast where the forest meets black volcanic sand beaches.

Arena Blanca, the only white-sand beach on Bioko, sits along the western coast and offers the closest thing to a classic beach day the island has. The sand is fine and white, fringed by coconut palms that lean toward the water at angles that look engineered for photographs. In July the sea is warmer than you might expect given the overcast skies. The water is calm enough for swimming most mornings before the afternoon weather moves in. The full coastal circuit from Malabo also passes through fishing villages where pirogues are pulled up on dark volcanic sand, their painted hulls bright against the grey shoreline, and where the smell of wood smoke and grilling fish drifts from open-air kitchens along the road. Sipopo, closer to Malabo and more developed after the 2012 African Union summit brought new construction, has a stretch of beach with slightly better facilities. July's low season means neither beach is crowded. On an island where even peak season draws modest numbers, you may well be alone.