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The most obvious cultural expression of the amalgamation of peoples on São Tomé e Príncipe can be found in the island's recreation of the Portuguese play «The Tragedy of the Marquis of Mantua and the Emperor Charlemagne». Written in the 16th century by the blind Madeiran poet Baltazar Dias, the play now exists in various adaptations in the Santomean socio-cultural environment; in Creole it takes on the title Tchiloli. The most distinctive aspect of the play is the stark contrasts that it elicits. The male actors narrate the Renaissance text while being dressed in European women’s clothing and wearing unique masks. The whole highly charged experience is an extravagant spectacle of music and dance, becoming what many describe as a symbolic meeting between African and European heritage. As well as enacting the play every year within the country, Tchiloli groups perform at local festivals both in Sao Tome and Principe and abroad.

There have been many attempts to classify and analyze the Tchiloli, however as Angela Barros states in an article in BUALA, they ‘often come up against epistemological difficulties stemming from the shortage of African specialists’. The ease in seeing Tchiloli as related to a European influence on an African situation is evidence of a wider trend in the study of African theatre, however there is a deeper emblematic aspect about the Tchiloli that must be highlighted too. Again, as Barros states, Tchiloli, ‘is an example of the strength of the popular imagination and has found a solution in which the African cultural heritage has not been negated and other influences have been assimilated to create a spectacle with real African roots (from the Culture Trip).

Lazy cargo ship taking a sleep near Micolo (São Tomé), on the Gulf of Guinea... Micolo is a sand beach with coconut trees, palm trees and various ships with bad parking problems, as you can see below

Seen from 10.621 m high, somewhere above Mauritania - can you feel the hot?...

This is the World's largest hot desert at over 9,400,000 square kilometres (3,600,000 sq mi); covers most of Northern Africa - large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Western Sahara, Sudan and Tunisia. It is one of three distinct physiographic provinces of the African massive physiographic division. The desert landforms of the Sahara are shaped by wind or by occasional rains and include sand dunes and dune fields or sand seas (erg), stone plateaus (hamada), gravel plains (reg), dry valleys, and salt flats (shatt or chott). Unusual landforms include the Richat Structure in Mauritania. Several deeply dissected mountains and mountain ranges, many volcanic, rise from the desert, including the Aïr Mountains, Ahaggar Mountains, Saharan Atlas, Tibesti Mountains, Adrar des Iforas, and the Red Sea hills - thanks mr. wiki

Taken on the city of São Tomé, near the fortress of São Sebastião, on a lazy sunday afternoon

São Tomé e Princípe is an African country in the Gulf of Guinea, right on the Equator. A former colony of the Portuguese Empire, the island of São Tomé offers dramatic landscapes with torrents and waterfalls on its slopes, luxuriant mountains which culminates in Pico de São Tomé (2,024 m), sheer cliffs over the sea, as well as huge plantations (café, cacao) from the colonial era, primary rainforests filled with exotic birds, butterflies, black snakes and lush vegetation

Above the stunning Praia Banana (Banana beach) on the northern coast of Island of Príncipe, in the Gulf of Guinea

Príncipe is the northern of the two major islands of the country of São Tomé and Príncipe lying off the west coast of Africa, on Gulf of Guinea. It has an area of 136 km² and a population of approximately 6,000. The island is a heavily eroded volcano over three million years old covered with luxuriant tropical jungle. Príncipe rises in the south to 948 metres at Pico de Príncipe, in a thickly forested area wich is believed to be the last virgin primary rain forest of Africa. The north and centre of the Island were formerly plantations, formed under Portuguese Empire. These concentrated initially on producing sugar and later on cocoa, becoming the world's greatest cocoa producer. Since independence (1975) these plantations have since largely reverted to forest. Roça (plantation) Sundy, here in Príncipe, was the site where colonialists Einstein's Theory of Relativity was experimentally proved successful by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington and his team during the total solar eclipse of May 29, 1919