São Tomé

São Tomé needs 2 days: Fort São Sebastião, from the 16th century and now the National Museum, overlooking the colonial harbor, on one, and a trip to a «roça», a former Portuguese cocoa plantation turned visitor site, on the other. June-September is best (the dry season known as «gravana»). It's mid-to-high priced given how underdeveloped local tourism is. It sits almost exactly on the Equator, and the country was for a long time one of the world's largest cocoa producers, a legacy still visible in its semi-abandoned colonial plantations among the rainforest.