Pico Sao Tome, Highpoint of Sao Tome and Principe

Pico Sao Tome, Highpoint of Sao Tome and Principe

Jan 28, 2026
Eric, Jared, Serge

Survey results: 2023.5m +/-0.1m EGM2008

Jan 27 – Fly to Sao Tome
Jan 28 – climb Pico Sao Tome
Jan 29 – Fly out

Sao Tome and Principe is an island nation off the west coast of Africa that is a former Portuguese colony. The highest peak in the country is Pico Sao Tome, also known as Pico Gago Coutinho.

Sao Tome is one of the easiest country highpoints in the Africa because no visas are required (for Americans at least), there are no guide or permit requirements, the country is generally safe, and the peak is a standard day hike on a trail to the summit.

One of the few problems is that flights in this region of Africa are very unreliable. Our original ticket had a layover in Libreville of 45 minutes, but we got an email from the airline that this had been changed to a two-day layover. That wouldn’t work for us since we only budgeted a few days on the island. They didn’t have any options to change it, so we cancelled and bought another flight last minute.

Another complication is almost all flights to or from Sao Tome connect in Libreville, Gabon. The US recently imposed a travel ban on citizens from Gabon, so Gabon imposed a reciprocal ban on US citizens.

We called the Gabon embassy and the airlines and they assured us the ban did not apply to short transits in the airport. So it appeared travelling to Sao Tome would work.

We flew from Benin to Sao Tome, arriving in the evening Jan 27. We met a rental car person who had a small Suzuki 4×4 for us. He drove us around to a few ATMs until we found one that worked, then we dropped him off and continued to our hotel.

That night I was able to get a few hours of sleep before I gave a zoom presentation for the MIT Outing Club winter school program between midnight and 2am (which was evening time in Boston).

We wanted to get an early start on the peak to beat potential afternoon rain, so we all left right after my presentation.

We drove on paved roads to Ponta Figo, then up rough 4×4 roads inland. By the time we were about 1km from the trailhead we heard a loud pop sound and the Suzuki shut off. We would later learn some sort of hose in the engine had ripped out of place.

Since we were so close to the start we pushed the Suzuki over to the side of the road and started hiking around 330am.

The trail started out as a muddy long-abandoned road, which we followed for two hours until we reached the remains of a few huts.

By then the sun had risen and we followed the trail up a very steep ridge. The trail was generally in good shape, just steep. At one point the trail descended 50m down the side of the ridge, then continued up to a small wooden hut on what I believe is called Pico Pequeno. The vegetation had changed a lot by then from jungle to open trees and grass as we climbed to around 2000m.

From there we followed the trail along a steep ridge and topped out around 730am, 4 hours after starting.

The summit has a large concrete trig pillar from 1916 with a metal pole on top. On the side in marble is engraved “Pico Gago Coutinho 2024m, 1969”. So it appears it was surveyed in 1916 and again in 1969.

I quickly mounted the Trimble DA2 on the top of the metal pole using my flexible-leg tripod, then started logging data. I measured the distance from the receiver to ground at the edge of the pillar, and would subtract this off later.

It appeared the rain wasn’t materializing, luckily. We could see the coast down through the trees to the west, and the tops of a few other peaks in the distance through the haze.

We got service and called the car owner and told him about the situation. It was a little complicated to explain but we asked him to pick us up at the place where the vehicle broke down, and we gave him an estimated time.

After an hour I logged the data and we headed down. It took about three hours to descend, and we saw a few locals hiking up near the trailhead. Surprisingly, one guy said he had tried to fix the engine but wasn’t sure if it was fixed since he didn’t have the key to try to start it.

We thanked him and soon made it back to the Suzuki by noon. Even though we had asked the owner to meet us there by 11am, nobody was there.

We had left the windows down since they were power windows and wouldn’t close with the engine not working. Someone had stolen some food and a coffee mug we left in there.

The hood was open and Jared inspected it and reconnected a hose, then tried to turn on the engine. Amazingly, it turned on! I’m not sure the exact issue, but it appears going up the very steep 4×4 track had overworked the engine and a hose had popped out of place.

This was a great outcome since there was still no sign of the owner, and we would have had to walk a ways back to the main road from there.

We drove back down to Ponta Figo, then called the owner to tell him he didn’t need to meet us anymore. We made it back to the hotel soon after and spent the afternoon resting.

The next morning we got up early to drive over to see Pico Cao Grande, an iconic peak on Sao Tome that is a 300m rock spire sticking out of the jungle. We then returned to the airport and flew out.

I processed the GNSS data with TrimbleRTX and got 2023.5m +/-0.1m EGM2008. This is very close to the elevation of 2024m from the 1969 survey. This is likely because the summit is visible from the coast and not far away horizontally, so a theodolite measurement using standard equipment in the 1960s should be quite accurate.

 

 

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