Le Tour de Sal

Sal Island, Cape Verde, 15th January 2012

We finally managed to get out of Santa Maria. With our apparently trusty bicycles, we headed north (the only way we could really go) aiming to get to Espargos, the capital of the island. It was a mere 18km from Santa Maria. Inna had decided that such exertion was not for her and so M and I were alone to face the elements. Things started deteriorating rather rapidly. For a start, M's bike refused to go any higher than 3rd gear. Whereas I revelled in my liberty to cycle in any gear I desired, my chain had a rather amusing habit of popping off whenever I wanted to change. Hence, barely a kilometre out of Santa Maria, my hands were covered in oil and M had repeatedly screamed "I CAN'T CYCLE ON THIS THING !". This being Sunday, of course, the bicycle shop was closed (he'd only opened in order to give the bikes to us and wouldn't be back until 5pm) and so we were stuck with what we had. A true gentleman (naturally), I offered to swap bikes with M but she couldn't reach the pedals on mine. And this was all before we reached the big hill.

By this point it seemed obvious that Espargos was to be a distant dream. We decided to aim for Murdeira, a small village on the coast about halfway to Espargos. Another amusing factor was that this was a particularly windy day, and on a small, flat island which is already one of the world's leading kitesurfing destinations that meant quite a struggle. We slalomed up and then down the big hill, desperately trying to avoid the occasional trucks and buses coming from behind us. We reached Murdeira. "Tell me", said M. "Are you really enjoying this ? Because if you are, I just can't understand your thought process". I tried to give an explanation featuring the wind in my hair and the freedom of having a bicycle. "But there's nothing to see on this island", she continued. This was a fair point. Sal is basically a big rock. Murdeira, it turned out, was a village consisting only of tourist homes and a beach resort which appeared to have no customers, low season as it was. M had had enough and, due to a strangely shaped saddle, I was sauntering around à la John Wayne in quite a bit of discomfort. We turned around and went back, found some live music and had a beer. I was unable to sit comfortably until we left Cape Verde the next day.

Post Scriptum : I'd had a plan to film some scenes from this lovely day and turn it into a small video by "Bicycle Race" by Queen as the theme tune. As it turned out, the camera packed up about 10 minutes before we left and hence we have no pictures to remind us of what was, all in all, a very successful day out.

The lesson continues

Santa Maria, Cape Verde, January 6th - January 12th 

 

The sleepy streets of Santa Maria

Fishing boats in the harbour...

The lesson in beach holiday continued at a frantic pace. The girls have experience in this domain and I feel like a total novice which, indeed, I am. The last beach holiday I went on must have been around 18 years ago when I was a kid and my grandmother had an apartment on the coast in the south of France. Still, my parents were about as talented as I am at this sort of thing and after a day or 2 of beach bumming we'd be in the car and zipping off to anywhere within striking distance. In our case we have no car and, in any case, Sal is only around 30x10km and so there really isn't all that many places to go. Nonetheless, I've roped the girls into renting bicycles someday and doing some sort of exploring. They've agreed to this in principle but getting them to actually do it may be a different kettle of fish and I'm coming to terms with the fact that I may be cycling around Sal myself. Our initial days in Santa Maria consisted of pretty similar activities :

Morning: Cook breakfast, go to the beach. I would get bored of lying on the beach and go for a swim, coming back to niggle to girls to join me given that swimming in the sea alone is also boring after a while. They'd come up with some excuse as to why they couldn't (generally "it's cold" or "I've just put sun lotion on") and continue reading their books. After a few days I got slightly better at this "lying on the beach" business but it's still the part of the beach holiday course that I'm struggling with the most. I think it just takes a certain type of person, and I am not that type of person. I'm still trying though

Lunch: at the beginning we went to various different places to eat but then started to realise that prices in Cape Verde (or at least in Santa Maria) are similar to those in Europe so we ended up cooking for lunch as well. I suppose it's reasonable given that Sal, at least, is completely barren and totally incapable of growing any sort of crops. Salt is cheap given the presence of a salt mine just up the coast but otherwise you will get a few products from elsewhere in Cape Verde (wine, pasta) or else the vast majority is imported from Portugal or in some cases (strangely, in the case of frozen chicken) from Brazil. I haven't seen anything imported from nearby Senegal for some reason, apart from the souvenir vendors who occasionally chase you down the road trying to tempt you into their shop.

 

The girls demonstrate an essential tanning skill : "keeping something on head to prevent burning face"

Afternoon: Return to beach. See "Morning". Optional addition of drinking a caipirinha or 3, which is one of the few things to be buyable at far lower prices than in Europe. A positive point.

Evening. Go out to eat and a) come back to the apartment and sit around chatting or  b) go out to a bar, have more caipirinhas or the local "Strela" beer, which is pretty tasty.

"Take a picture of this ! Every boy's dream !"

After the initial stages of my learning, I have surprisingly not put on much of a belly but I have taken a slightly reddish tinge, which could be as a result of my militant antipathy to sun cream. It's just too annoying and sticky. I hesitate to publicly write this as I can see my mother launching into a speech about melanoma and so on but my reasoning is that I go on so few holidays where I actually bare anything aside from my legs and face that the cancer Gods can probably forgive me an oversight here or there.

Sleepy street scene #2

Santa Maria town is pretty touristy although it's low key for a tourist town, particularly an African tourist town. Aside from the aforementioned Senegalese statuette and sunglasses vendors, people generally go around their own business and pay little attention to the raging hordes of tomato-coloured tourists. In fact, in contrast to many other places I've seen in Africa, local people lounge at the beach and go windsurfing along with the visitors. I'm looking forward to my potential bike exploration to go and see other towns on the island - hopefully there are some untainted by tourism so that I can see a bit more of what Cape Verde is all about. The flights to other, more interesting islands were priced slightly out of our league so we're pretty much stuck here. Still, I'm going to make the most of it...

 

Vamos a la playa

White (Sands) Christmas

Santa Maria, Cape Verde, 5th January 2012

As the New Year passed and people all over Europe looked out of their windows at miserable, wet and windy weather, two people in a small corner of France knew they wouldn't have to put up with it for much longer. No no, M and T had a master plan. They had tickets to go Cape Verde for a while.

A one-night layover in London where we were hosted by the delightful Sal (delighted by the fact that the island we were going to is his namesake) and joined by the equally delightful Dixon and Laura (see South Africa) kickstarted the trip.  Tactics were poor, though, and we  woke up on Sal's floor at 6am with pounding headaches and stiff limbs, facing the prospect of dragging our tired bodies and suddenly heavy bags to Gatwick airport. 

Sal and Dixon welcome the hardy travellers to London

T tries out his travellers sunglasses

 Our carrier for the day is Thomson Airways, some charter company which flies to a range of places where fat and pasty European tourists sit and wallow in the sunshine. Cape Verde may be heading to be that way in future but for now it's not quite firmly on the tourist map. The airfare is cheap although we decide not to take up Thomson's offer of checked-in luggage for an outrageous £36 a bag. The hand luggage is limited to 5kg so packing was always going to be an exercise in frugality. In the end I went slightly over the top and ended up wearing 8 t-shirts and a pair of shorts under my trousers in order to get my bag down to the accepted weight. My coat pockets were jammed with socks and various bits and pieces and my bag managed to get to 4,99kg. Score. They didn't weigh the bags at check-in so the effort was completely fruitless. Our seats were the only 3 on the entire plane that didn't go back and so sleeping off the hangover had to be done in a completely vertical position. Still, we arrived in one piece, got our visas at the airport and we were in !

Introducing the (very fresh) crew : T on the streets of London

 Inna enjoying the train ride to the airport

 M enjoying the travellator ride

Sal island is small, barren and windswept - from the plane we could see both west and east coasts at the same time and everything in between was a rocky brown colour. A nearly empty highway goes from north to south and a few small villages are dotted around. It's hard to believe that this is one of 10 islands which form the country. It's beautiful in a desolate way and I spend most of the taxi ride down to Santa Maria staring out of the window and taking it all in. Mentally, I'm planning to climb that hill, cycle to this village, walk around that area. Maybe I'll do those things, maybe I won't - who knows ? This is the first time I've taken a holiday of this style - renting an apartment, having a pre-paid base and not having any plans to move. No 5am treks to the bus station with bags on backs, no traipsing around new towns at 1am looking for a place to sleep. I'm not sure how I'm going to like it but there's only one way to find out !

View from the front door. Very typical of Africa.

A rocky section of Santa Maria beach

I receive a gentle crash course on day 1. The apartment is a hop, skip and jump from the beach and a mere hop and skip from a beach bar by the name of Angulo's. It's a few minutes' walk into town where there are restaurants and bars (many of them seemingly geared up for the tourist business) and the "mercado municipal". An African market is generally a place where you can buy anything you could need and when we realised we had no towels, I dropped in to find that, aside from one hairdressers stall, the entire market is dedicated to little carvings and bracelets for the tourists. When I ask one vendor where I can get towels, he directs me to the Chinese supermarket down the road. It will take a bit of getting used to I'm sure but the pace is slow and the weather is a gentle 25 degrees which is something I'd almost forgotten existed back in the European winter - I'm sure that if I can do it anywhere, I can do it here !

Angulo beach bar 

Pasty tourists checking in...!