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...!

White Xmas = Black day on the roads

Unlike most of the places featured on this blog, France is a country where everything works, where the First World in all its glory makes life simple and reliable. Which is why I have had to walk to Switzerland recently due to pick up a tram as snowfall has confused the bus drivers something terrible. At least it looks nice.

Road Trip !

Various places en route to Liechtenstein

The smallest country I'd ever been to was Bahrain. Living in the Geneva area, I'd often glanced across Switzerland on a map and been intrigued by Liechtenstein lying on the other side of it. It's a country known for being a tax haven, being extremely small, and having an extraordinarily wealthy prince. Tantalisingly, it's also known for producing rare stamps for sale to collectors, and is apparently the world's largest producer of false teeth.

Cole had expressed an interest in European country-bashing and when he and Tom (see Georgia and Armenia) landed in our little corner of Europe, a trip to Liechtenstein was on the cards. We'd go through three countries in one day (Cole, living in Vancouver, would have to do a day return to Mexico to accomplish this back home - Tom would have to sail to Indonesia via Papua New Guinea). We'd borrowed my parents trusty old car ("are you sure ? I wouldn't take this any further than Lyon, it would break down...") for the trip. And at 10.30am, a mere 2 hours later than planned, we hit the road.

Introducing the crew: M, the trusty driver

...and our intrigued tourists

Driving through Switzerland is not particularly exciting - the more beautiful, mountainous regions of the Valais and Graubunden are away to the south and our highway took us along the plans through the picturesque town of Bern and the reputedly dreary city of Zurich, famous for being full of banks and also for being voted the second most boring city in Europeto travel to by an online survey. The winner of the survey's most boring city award was Brussels, which I happen to find quite a fun place to be, so I'm not sure if Zurich is that bad. However, if it beat Geneva into the list as the Swiss representative, it must be pretty terrible. In any case, we didn't stop there. We did, however, want to stop somewhere. And this was chosen on the strength of the comedy of the name as well as its proximity to the motorway. Several towns called Egg were considered (as were offshoots named Wildegg and Handegg, amongst others), as was the Bern suburb of Wankdorf, but Wangen an der Aare won out. We pulled off and wandered around.

I wasn't joking !

"Bridge over the river Aare"

Tourists flock to Wangen

It turned out to be a delightful little place - a bizarre-looking wooden covered bridge led us from the motorway to a small car park where we were immediately swamped with armed soldiers. This being Switzerland, though, these guys were assembling for their regular military service and trotted off down the road, weapons strapped around their backs. Quite why Switzerland has compulsory military service every year when it is neutral and has not been involved in a war since the late Jurassic period I cannot work out, but at least it gives the residents of small towns like Wangen something to do over the weekend.

We pushed on and eventually crossed a small bridge over the Rhine, went past a fluttering blue and red flag and that was it. Not only were we in Liechtenstein, but we were in Vaduz, probably the least imposing capital I have ever seen. But it's also the smallest capital I've ever been to, so that's fair enough. Our plan to get a bus up to Malbun, from where we could walk across the country back to Vaduz, hit a snag when we rather amateurishly waited on the wrong side of the road.

Foreground: Delighted tourists in the Co-op supermarket car park. Background: Humble abode of the prince of Liechtenstein

About 80% of Vaduz

The next bus would come in an hour, which meant we'd be walking in the dark half of the time. Maybe it could wait until next time. We hopped back into the trusty car, struggled up the hill to Malbun, looked around and then found a spot from which we could admire half of the country as well as a decent chunk of Switzerland over the river Rhine. From here, we ate the sandwiches we'd put together in the car and drank the Liechtenstein Brauhaus beer we'd got in Vaduz.

The Xsara struggles up Liechtenstein's steep inclines, with M's gentle encouragement...

Warning: Sandwich master at work

Malbun: the end of the road. Literally

After watching the sun go down from our impressive vantage point, we realised we had another 5 hour drive to get back home. I don't have a license, Cole's is expired and Tom didn't fancy driving on the "wrong" side of the road for fear or landing the car somewhere undesirable and so M, the soldier at the wheel, took us back across the Rhine from whence we had come.

Viewpoint from the end of the tunnel. Foreground: 80% of Liechtenstein. Background: a small amount of Switzerland

We made it !!

It's worth saying that I'd like to come back to Liechtenstein for slightly longer. We left later than we thought, the drive took longer than we thought, and we probably spent about 2 hours in the country overall, which is quite a bit less than we'd planned.Nonetheless, not only is the country rather small (at 160 square kilometres, it would fit nearly 8 times into New York City and it is also narrower than the Congo river) but it also slightly impenetrable. Its border with Austria is largely inaccessible due to high mountains and the only road into Austria goes right in the north. After Malbun, the road peters out and the border is reachable only along footpaths. I'd imagine that one would probably run out of things to do there after a short while.

Still, it's a beautiful little place and well worth a visit for someone who has a spare day or two, and the beer is surprisingly tasty. Just make sure that you get to the bus on time. And the trusty old car CAN go further than Lyon.

And the tourists go home happy and excited from their trip to foreign lands..

Ya No Mafioz!

Yerevan and Sevanavank, Armenia - 6th October - 8th October

There is an Armenian joke which goes something like this.

A little Armenian boy asks his grandfather, "Grandfather ! Grandfather ! Why has Armenia never put a man on the moon ?" His grandfather replies, "Well, my boy. If Armenia put a man on the moon, all Georgians would die of envy. If all Georgians died of envy, then all Armenians would die of happiness. And then the Azeris would get all of the land !" The rivalry is more friendly than anything else (besides, the Armenians have more than enough on their plate with the Turks and Azeris to worry about hating the Georgians as well), but our hop from one small Caucasian country to another was certainly to be a big change.

As it happened, the joke was on us. Our train was scheduled to arrive at 7am and, as the conductor banged on our door at 5.30am, we grunted, muttered vague insults and fell asleep again. He persisted though and indicated he wanted the sheets back, while we cursed him for waking us up an hour and a half before arrival in Yerevan. He counted, recounted and told me there was a pillowcase missing. I went back and eventually found it lying on the floor (it turned out that my attempted theft of an Armenian Railways issue pillow case went badly wrong and I ended up with a plain kitchen cloth instead). A short while later, we pulled into a grand station. As I poked my head out of the window, I was confronted with Ani's unmistakeably cheery smiling face. It began to dawn on me that we hadn't arrived an hour ahead of schedule, we'd actually changed time zones. We decided that our muttered insults to the conductor weren't in fact very fair, apologised for them subconsciously, and hopped into a taxi to Ani's place.

We eventually woke up and wandered around Yerevan. It's less picturesque than Tbilisi but somehow I felt it was a lot more lived in. Markets, people and noise are everywhere. Ani took us to a protest site where tent dwelling protesters want the president to step down. The streets were covered in French flags, for some reason, and when we got back to her place she found out that Nicolas Sarkozy was in town. Two unpopular presidents in the same country, then.

Freedom square (certainly NOT the parliament house), feat. protesters

As tradition befits, we had a mission for the day - the find tickets for the Armenia-Macedonia European Qualifier for tomorrow. Ani had told us in Tbilisi that she'd sort some out but on going to the ticket office she'd been told that the game was sold out. But, while we were sitting and eating Lahmajo (a small yet amazing Armenian pizza) she got a phone call from a friend, got animated, and announced that black market sellers had tickets at the stadium. We wandered down, picked up some tickets, and celebrated with beer and a trip to a market stall where we picked up Armenian-themed football scarves and hats. We were ready.

Fame at last !

Next stop was a market hall where I found possibly the best man in all of Armenia, a guy who sold only cheese, meat and tuti oghi, an Armenian firewater made from mulberries. We bought cheese and meat from the gentleman and were asked if we wanted to try some tuti oghi. Never the type to refuse a cultural experience (of course), we accepted and were taken to a room behind a curtain where my new friend poured us each a shot from some kind of glass jerry-can.

The chilli sauce lady is somewhat surprised that I don't find her chilli sauce mouth-destroyingly hot. "Armenians don't really eat spicy food", Ani pointed out

"You do know how to do this, right ?" asked Ani. It seemed like a rather obvious question. We'd all done shots before.
"You breathe in, take the shot, then breathe out". Noted.

Unfortunately, I made a hash of it and breathed out while the tuti oghi was still in my mouth and suffered the most outrageous heartburn I've ever had for several minutes afterwards. We later found out that tuti oghi is about 75% alcohol content, so it probably wasn't a surprise. We bought a half-litre bottle of the stuff anyway.

The greatest man in Armenia, taking care with his wares

We woke up the next day and poor Ani had used a fair proportion of Armenia's annual toilet paper production during the night blowing her nose and declared that she was sick, but recommended that we go up to Sevanavank, on the shore of lake Sevan, as it was a beautiful area with monasteries and lakeside bars and restaurants. We had about 5 hours before we needed to be back for the game, though, and Sevan was 75km away. Not to mention that we'd have to get to the bus station and back. I was sceptical.

"It's fine !" she said, "you can take a taxi up there !". My mind started playing images of us dishing out stacks of money to take a 75km taxi both ways. "It'll cost you about 4€ each". What ? At that price it was a bargain. She called a taxi and within half an hour we were on our way. "He just needs to fill up with gas and hope you don't mind", she said. No problems at all, we said, wondering how we'd get up there if he didn't. I'd love to say that we sped off towards the north but we didn't. Our taxi was a battered Lada, capable of a maximum speed of about 40km/h going downhill with a tailwind. We were going uphill and there was no wind at all. And then he stopped to fill up with gas. When we'd said we didn't mind, we didn't imagine that he'd go to a petrol station away from the highway, take ages to fill up, and then fail to find his way back onto the highway again. The whole detour took us more than half an hour and, of course, the meter was running the whole time. I was concerned about the loss of time but even more concerned about M's rising anger levels towards this driver which, once they start, cannot be stopped until she reaches a stage a few pegs short of Krakatoa. I assured her I'd sort it out and left her fuming in peace. We eventually got to Sevanavank, 2 hours after leaving Yerevan, gave the driver 1000 dram less than what his meter said, and walked away. He protested but didn't really chase after us, which I assume means that he knew we were right. The weather was hot, the monasteries were a short climb above us, and the lake spread out ahead of us under a bright blue sky. Life was good again.

Lake Sevan. Nice eh ?

M poses next to a bunch of stones

Alright, it was touristy. But even the tourists seemed exotic - outrageously dressed Russians (the women just had to be seen to be believed - stilettos that tall are probably illegal in most countries) were so different to camera-toting Europeans that I looked at them as part of the exotic charm of the place, rather than as a bunch of people getting in my way, as I usually would. The monasteries were more impressive from the outside than the inside but it was a nice little patch to walk around. We did the tourist thing and poked around, took some pictures and went downstairs, bearing in mind that it had taken us 2 hours to get up here. Just as we were buying a soft drink each, we were approached by a mafia-style guy with a neck as thick as his shaved head and a very classy tracksuit. "Taxi ?" he asked. He pointed us towards his car. We'd definitely make good time in that one, we thought. And since we'd seen everything, we hopped in.

Despite the G-Force during our return to Yerevan, M seems composed

Our driver was an enthusiastic, charming speed demon who would take time out from looking at the road to type various prices on his phone for other services he could offer. Over the course of the trip, he offered us a stop-over in pretty much every town in Armenia and also a ride to Tbilisi tomorrow, with prices included. He told us, "YA NO MAFIOZ !!", he was the only non-mafia driver in Sevan and with the others we'd get ripped off. With him, we were confident we'd done a good deal. Not only did we do most of the trip at 170km (during which time he made "crazy" gestures by pointing at his head as he turned round to look at us, laughing, every time someone got in his way or crossed the road ahead of him) but he also took time off from looking at the road to spray us with perfume, give M a shiny stone as a gift, and do various dusting jobs inside his car. We made it to Ani's door in about 40 minutes, of which I would presume that our man looked at the road for a maximum of 3. This probably gave him good reason to look at us as he dropped us off and boom out "GOOD DRIVER !". We agreed and gave him the agreed money, which was less than we'd paid for our rustbucket on the way up. He asked for a tip "for thank you" but when we smiled and turned him down, he still sent us away with a wave and a cheery smile.

Armenian scarf + Armenian sausage, both delightful

We scooped Ani out of bed, kitted ourselves out with fan-gear and headed off towards the stadium. Cole lost his hat and as M and I stood around waiting for him we were interviewed for Armenian TV. Our chances of actually being aired suffered a blow though, as the interviewer, somewhat surprised at finding such patriots who were in fact not Armenian at all, turned to M.

On the way to the game !

"What do you think of the Armenian team ??" she asked enthusiastically
"Err... I don't know, I've never seen them play", M replied. Finnish-style honesty is usually a good thing, but sometimes good-natured bullshitting has its merits too. Ah well.

Having managed to smuggle a hip flask of yesterday's tuti oghi through 3 military checkpoints outside the ground, I was delighted with myself and the cauldron-like atmosphere inside the stadium promised a lot of noise if Armenia scored. They delivered. Armenia won 4:1, everyone went home (or rather to the bar) happy, and we joined Ani and some friends of hers for post-match celebration before getting some sleep.

GOOOOOOOOOL ! Maybe

GOOOOOOOOOL ! Certainly ! Cole's thoughts on the Macedonian team: "Even Canada could beat these guys"

Final score

We DESTROYED em !!!

A consequence of late-night bar action. "Pictures look much better in black and white", we decided. Here is the proof

It was to be the last of our adventures before heading off. Our next day featured a minibus ride back to Tbilisi, an evening spent with Tom and Tako (and possibly the only Guinean tourist ever to have visited Georgia), and gift shopping for the folks back home. Before we knew it, we were in a taxi to the airport. We still had time to fall asleep in Kiev and very nearly miss our flight back home but that was it. Until next time.......

We really did meet one !!

And finally, because I did it with the African tales, we have to finish this trip with...

A lovey dovey cheesy picture. Just to show that, through all of these adventures without killing each other. Hooray for us ! And yes, it's a heart-shaped potato.