Les roças de Monte Café, Agua-lzé e Sundy

I visited in June 2025 the roças of Sundy, Água-Izé and Monte Café that are part of this nomination.

The first visit was at the Roça Sundy on the island of Príncipe. Sundy is now owned by the HBD Príncipe hotel group and the roça's main buildings have been renovated to cater as luxury hotel facilities. For this reason this was the most pleasant visit of all the roças. We stayed at one of the HBD's hotels on the island so visit to Roça Sundy was easy to organize (there are basically no public transportation or taxis on Príncipe). Sundy is the biggest roça on Príncipe. The roça originally produced coffee but these days its only product is chocolate, and the production is very small scale. The main building, that used to be the owner's house, has a beautiful entrance hall with a restaurant at the back which is open for anyone. From the restaurant's balcony opens amazing view to the sea and over the lush forests as the roça is located quite high up on a hill. Next to the main building is a small monument to the British astronomer Arthur Eddington who proved here in 1919 that Einstein's theory of relativity to be correct. Bit further away from the main building there is a massive wall that looks like a fortress. This wall is the only thing left of the horse stables of the roça. Next to the wall is the former chapel of …

I visited Agua-Ize one month ago (June 2024). We saw the beautiful, haunting structures along the EN -2 (main national road) and turned into the Água Izé complex itself. The factory owners of this large plantation-factory complex had apparently abandoned it after the chaos at independence (1975), leaving the complex to decay and fall into ruins. Huge and magnificent even in a ruined, dilapidated condition. That is when problem arose - our car was quickly surrounded by aggressive young people who demanded to be engaged as guides. In any case, we might consider the proposal if we speak Portuguese, but we don't. The whole atmosphere was quite intimidating with some of them demanding that we leave if we didn't agree to accept them as guides. We were passing on our way between the south and Sao Tome city, and did not have much time. So we decided to leave without exploring the roca. That was a pity. If the country is able to police the area, train jobless young roca residents to be proper guides and invest in restoring the area, Roça Água Izé has the potential to be revitalized into a heritage and tourism resort complex, restoring its former grandeur.