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A tour leader, travel writer and translator, Kathleen Becker spends a large part of the year on São Tomé & Príncipe, the tiny cocoa islands on the equator, leading hiking groups for UK and German operators. A European Creole of German-Irish heritage, she first explored São Tomé & Príncipe for Bradt's pioneering guide in 2006.
Recently picked up by mainstream travel media as one of the Top Ten Places to Visit in the World, São Tomé & Príncipe is one of those places that stays with you. With Kathleen's guide, part the thick green curtains of the rainforest on a trail once taken by escaped slaves, grapple with kizomba moves in the company of the dance-mad youngsters (the median age is 18), learn to tell the endemic Speirops from the White-eye or watch a turtle dig her nest on deserted beaches, sample the latest fluffy creation at a new chocolate factory, surf the warm waters of magic Seven Waves Beach, and share a slice of humble daily life with the friendly and curious Santomeans. Leve-leve is the country's motto with many meanings: a response to a greeting, an invitation to take things slowly, to go with the flow, but also in the right direction with an assured step. Based in a workaday city neighbourhood of street food sellers when not leading tours, she was involved in ecotourism training along the Cocoa Route in the north in 2015 and started teaching English to local agency guides in 2018, picking up aspects of Santomean life and Creole words from her students along the way - sharing in the lifelong adventure of learning.
This edition was updated with the help of Sean Connolly ([ig] shanboqol), who first travelled to Africa as a student in 2008 and returns to the continent whenever possible to research, teach or simply soak up the ambiance in Africa's countless little-visited corners. He's been poring over maps since before he could read them, and working with Bradt Guides since 2011. Along with authoring two editions of Bradt's Senegal, he's also updated or contributed to the Bradt guides to Somaliland, Malawi, Mozambique, Ghana, Uruguay, Sierra Leone, two editions of Rwanda and Gabon. He first visited and fell in love with STP in 2015, and has been raving about it to anyone who will listen ever since. |
