"Alko-Tur"

Chernihiv, Ukraine, 27th May 2012

Our departure from Kiev was impressively close to the time we said it would be. Marina drove through the busy streets of Kiev to a metro station on the outskirts where we'd meet with her cousin and his girlfriend and would go out to Chernihiv together on some sort of mini-road-trip. Sasha and Zhenia eventually found us, climbed in and said hello. They seemed friendly although we were to have a slight (read: total) language barrier. That didn't stop them, or us, wanting to have a chat so Marina, having worked all day as a tourist guide yesterday, would spend today in the guise of interpreter.


Looking at Ukraine on a map, you would imagine that it's largely empty. It's a country which dwarfs anywhere else in Europe aside from Russia, and roads go out from Kiev in straight lines to distant towns, crossing each other occasionally but not taking you anywhere else. The reality is quite different and the roads are dotted with villages, each with its own standard-issue bus stop. Added to these are the roadside petrol stations with associated shop, one of which we stopped at. My beer-tourism mission took me straight to the fridge and I looked for something new, but Sasha had other ideas and insisted I try a brew which went by the name of Stella Artois. I already know this, I told him. The brewery is a short distance from where I grew up. He had a word with Marina and I felt that I would have to allow myself to be persuaded.


"This one is made in Ukraine !" she translated. 


I was persuaded to try it and, well, it tasted pretty much the same as the one I already knew. Still, if you don't try you don't get. And I tried.

Chernihiv's one and only "love seat". We just had to.

We bumped through the streets of Chernihiv, past the main square and a few parks, and went out the other side. Marina had decided to show us the train station, slightly out of the centre. Despite it's grand facade and the spotless hammer-and-sickle motifs on the inside, Chernihiv station isn't exactly the most lively place and the trains were headed either to Russia, to Belarus or back to Kiev. I didn't have a visa for the first two and was going to the third anyway, and my idea of buying a ticket to the next place I could see fizzed away. We got back into the car and hit the centre of town for a wander.

Train station.

One of Chernihiv's many colourful churches

Chernihiv is a pleasant little place, with colourful churches scattered around, and generally lots of stuff to do. As in Kiev, the streets were full of people just having a wander and a chat, and kids playing on trampolines and whatever other fun things were on offer. Our guides, urban and sophisticated as they were, had to remind themselves to slow down in the small town and occasionally walked off at high speed to demonstrate how they would be walking in Kiev. In this  slow pace, we wander to the river where, as anywhere the USSR used to spread to, various things were rusting away. Cranes which used to handle cargo, the "rocket", a boat which took you up-river at a speed far higher than anything we had seen in Chernihiv, and a strange, abandoned looking building who's only sign of life was a tinny loudspeaker playing some of that wonderful "cheesy but I don't care" Russian pop music. As we wandered through the cannons on display in a nearby park, the loudspeaker interrupted its broadcasting to announce something.

Old wooden house

"Ah ! There is a cruise leaving soon !" Marina translated once again. It seemed to everyone to be a good idea. Sasha was keen on getting some beer for the trip, got directions to the nearest shop from a couple of girls and bought us a round of Berdychivske beer, another one to add to the list.

Hot air balloon and old truck

"This is what we call Alko-Tur !", Marina said, and M and I, never ones to shy away from local cultural experiences, happily joined in. We bought a ticket for 20 grivnyas, although the ticket had a price of 20 kopeeks on it, and had been issued by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. I have no idea how many tickets were printed given that these are still in use, but I'm sure it will end up in a drawer somewhere at home and can be used to liven up dinner parties with boring conversation. The boat didn't go anywhere in particular but there was cheesy music on board, we were endlessly waved at by people lining the river banks, sunning themselves and playing volleyball, and we talked about this and that, learning and experiencing little snippets of Ukraine as we went. We also try to give back to the community and so explained to Sasha in particular that Speedos were a major fashion faux-pas where we come from, which he looked a little perplexed by. By the looks of the crowds on the riverside beaches, Speedos are as compulsory in Ukraine for men as stilettos are for women. We returned to Chernihiv having seen nothing much apart from beaches and forests, but it was a delightful little trip. Alko-Tur claimed 2 more fans.

The "Alko-Tur" gang

Generic boat & river picture

Returning to Chernihiv centre, we found a restaurant and were introduced to many Ukrainian dishes, each as tasty as the next, each round of food interspersed with a shot of chilli pepper vodka to wash the food down. Sasha had taken a spicy dish to eat and so was in a bit of trouble and so I went to pour a second round of chilli vodka. He looked alarmed and I was told that whoever poured the first shot had to pour all of the others. I can't remember why this is but it was another thing to remember. Travelling really is a minefield when it comes to behaving yourself in other countries. 

 End-note: No Ukrainians were harmed in the making of this production. Sasha did eventually recover from his excess of chilli.

 I <3 Ukraine !

M's efforts to create an "I <3 Chernihiv" picture were rather successful

We headed off back to Kiev as "Kiev Days", our excuse for coming to Ukraine of which we had seen absolutely nothing, was to finish off with a fireworks and laser display down by the river. Once again, we were fantastically unsuccessful as we got bogged down in traffic and saw a few fireworks exploding into the night sky on a distant horizon.

Fuck Off Euro

Kiev, Ukraine, 26th May 2012

"Where are you staying ?"
"With a friend."
"Where ?"
"In Obolon."
"What address ?`"
"...I don't know."

Silence.

And then my passport was decorated with a delightfully fluorescent pink stamp and I was in. M followed by giving the same vague answers and gesticulating towards me. We picked up our bags and stepped out into the Ukrainian night air to be greeted by Marina who gained worldwide notoriety by bringing beer to us last time we were at Kiev airport and who was to be our delightful host for this long weekend. Our plans to be reasonable, get up early and see as much as we can got off to a terrible start as we drank wine and caught up on Marina's balcony until 6am. But we had faced more difficult challenges and we were up (reasonably) early to begin our walking tour of Kiev.

Obolon - starting point and all round groovy suburb

It's an interesting time to visit Kiev - Euro 2012 is just around the corner, the country is going through something of a political crisis as the president has carried out the time-honoured tradition of putting his most dangerous opponent in jail, and on this particular weekend was "Kiev Day", a celebration of the anniversary of the city. With Marina as our self-professed crap guide ("I want to answer your questions but I don't know anything") we clocked up the kilometres around the city, taking in beautiful sights and the odd beer along the way. Neither of us really knew what to expect from Kiev but it was a very pleasant surprise all round as every square and street welcomed us in turn with impressive size or pleasant architecture. Another side of Kiev that I quickly learnt to like was that it's hard to look like a tourist here. Whereas, in many places, whipping your camera out to take a picture of a building or square puts you squarely and irreparably in the tourist box, any vista or landmark in Kiev is surrounded by crowds of locals taking pictures of themselves and each other. Our only stand-out feature was our distinctly antiquated camera, which paled in comparison to the monstrous SLRs dangling around Ukrainian necks in every direction.

St Michael's church

It would have looked great on the balcony but I couldn't meet the asking price

The longest queue for the "Funikuler" that Kiev had ever seen

And we finally got inside

Our walk talk us up a cable car to the top of a hill upon which was the scintillating St Michael's Church and around grand streets to Independence square, where our wanderings were interrupted by an animated-looking young guy who turned around and interrogated me.

"You speak English ??"
"Yeh"
"Yeh, or yes ?"

The question caught me out.

"Yeh and yes. I do."

It seemed that our interlocutor's English failed him at this point and he turned to Marina and passionately explained something to her.

"He says that not all Ukrainians want the Euro here"

She explained that we weren't here for Euro 2012 and he seemed pacified. However before departing, he lifted a fist triumphantly and broke back into English for our benefit.

"Fuck off Euro !!" he exclaimed, no doubt inspired by the delightful ladies at Femen. Whereas the European Championships might divide opinion in Ukraine, the actions of Femen do as well, even amongst the women they claim to struggle for. "Those bitches", Marina calls them. "They started off well but now they just protest against everything. They protest in order to protest". And our new anti-Euro friend ? "He was probably already drunk...". There we go then. Still, it seems that predictions of football fans being killed if they come to the tournament are slightly over the top...

Maidan Mezalezhnosti or, for those with cramped tongues, Independence Square

The giant ball decided not to fuck off

 It was beer o'clock and we found a little terrace in the sun when Marina scampered off and returned to the table clutching some packets of dried fish and calamari. A local tradition which you'll find on menus under the heading "With Beer", the snacks are deliciously tasty and mental notes were made to fill the bag with them and take as many home as possible. The walk continued and took us past the parliament building which bore a curious resemblance to its German equivalent in Berlin, the presidential palace which was closed for repairs, a handful of other churches, the "lovers bridge" where newlywed couples put padlocks to symbolise the strength of their love, the monument to the unknown soldier and the Ukrainian famine memorial, and a handful of parks.

The lovers bridge

Last stop was the World War II (or, as it is known here, the Great Patriotic War) memorial park. This green space to commemorate the fighters and victims of the war was peppered with old tanks and aircraft, statues and the impressively large and imposing statue of Mother Ukraine. She looked suspiciously manly, and with the hammer and sickle on her sheild, her face turned to Moscow and her back to Western Europe, she left us in no doubt who was boss.

The eagle eyed with spot normal sized people below Mother Ukraine's feet...

"What's that ?" asked M, pointing to a large concrete disc up on a hill.
"That's the eternal flame", answered Marina

She must have noticed our wondering why there was no flame at the eternal flame.

"The gas prices went up..." she smiled. Another symbol on the difficult relations between Ukraine and mother Russia, despite the imposing stare dished out by the huge statue next to us. "They have the gas, we have the pipes". Hopefully an agreement will come soon, to prevent more guides having to explain why the eternal flame is no longer eternal.

 "Our beer makes you slim" promises the poster. Which could go some way to explaining the glaring lack of fat people on the streets of Kiev

 "With beer"

As the sun went down on another beer and more delicious "With Beer" snacks, we headed back to Marina's to take part in another great cultural event, the Eurovision Song Contest. After such a great day, would a victory for the outrageous Russian babushkas be too much to ask ? Sadly, the answer was yes.

Stop ! Feu Rouge

Amsterdam, Netherlands, 25th May 2012

I've been through Amsterdam many times due to KLM frequently offering the only reasonably-priced flights from Geneva to anywhere else but, aside from one evening's venturing into town a while back, I've never actually been into the city for a good look around. This was to change on one bright and sunny day. A 10 hour layover turned into an 8 hour layover because of a delayed flight but M and I, adventurers extraordinaire, finally made it to Amsterdam's Central Station and headed off vaguely south in an attempt to find an Indonesian restaurant to start the day with.

Albert Cuypstraat Market

As per usual, we found a market, more bars and restaurants than you could shake a stick at and pretty much everything else aside from the Indonesian restaurant we were hunting for and settled for a sandwich and a beer while engaging in the most touristy of procrastinatory activities, "people watching". Whereas the conclusions that can be drawn from such an activity are not always very enlightening (e.g. hotpants are in fashion this year and an incredible amount of people in Amsterdam own bicycles) it's an easy activity to carry out, a generally accepted travel practise (for some reason) and also fun (especially when hotpants are in fashion). It's also a way to get out all of the passive aggressive tension built up from sitting right in front of a screaming baby for the entire flight over ("how can a bicycle survive when it's sat on by a guy that fat ??").

The "as many bicycles as possible" picture which could, admittedly, have been better

The after was spent doing normal sunny-day-in-Amsterdam things such as wandering around, wishing I hadn't worn a long sleeved black t-shirt, having a beer on a terrace and trying to take pictures with as many bicycles in as possible. We finished off the tour with a visit to the red light district.

Generic Amsterdam Street Scene #823774923426748

Generic Amsterdam Canal Picture #58934904535/867

I am by no means experienced in red light districts (in fact this is the first one I have been to, having narrowly avoided wandering into one in Morocco by mistake) but Amsterdam's is rather a curious one by virtue of the people one may find there. And here I am not talking about the working ladies (which I would presume can be found in all red light districts) but the non-workers wandering around. Couples and curious wanderers of all ages can be found here, sampling a beer in the pleasant terrace bars dotted around and inspecting the strip clubs while being enticed in by the greeters at the door. It's all quite brazen - I heard one woman being offered "seeing three cocks for twenty Euros" and an older couple being assured that "there is real fucking in here" - but it's as close to what one might call a family atmosphere as you could imagine. The working ladies come out into the street and chat with each other and prospective clients and you almost forget (but not completely, of course) that they're standing around in minimal lingerie. Hen and stag parties complete the carnival atmosphere. In another one of the curiosities of travel, being offered "real fucking in here" is more of a cultural experience rather than the seedy night-time escapade that you'd never tell your work colleagues about if you visited a red light district in any other city in the world.

Amsterdam's liberal attitude even extends to bicycle parking

 And with my mind full of such philosophical thoughts, we headed back to the airport and boarded the plan to Kiev.

One Wedding And A Hangover

Helsinki, Finland, 11th-14th May 2012

I've reached the age where many of my contemporaries are doing the honourable thing, having kids, settling down and getting married. This weekend's mission was to take part in the wedding of a delightful friend of M's to an equally delightful guy in Helsinki. It was also an excuse to visit some old friends and brush up a bit on the rusty Finnish language skills.

Weddings, for some reason, make me nervous in a way. Wearing proper clothes and trying to remember wedding etiquette (I've only been to a handful and so I don't really know my way around) and attempting not to bring any form of disgrace to myself or to proceedings. I can usually rely on M to guide me through such occasions but she had been asked to fulfill the role of bridesmaid and so, for much of the evening, I was left to fend for myself. The only other person I knew at the wedding was another friend of M's who was as nervous and clueless as I was. Emilia and I managed to huddle together through the church ceremony, stand up at the right times and so on (mostly successfully done by just copying what everyone else did). Singing a church hymn in Swedish was a step too far for me but I think I got away with it by generally looking foreign and half-hearted attempts at lip-synching.  We then moved on to the reception. One feature of Finnish weddings is that, at some point early on in the event, the guests line up and congratulate the happy couple and then repeat the exercise for the happy couple's parents. As I knew the happy couple the first round of congratulations passed off without incident but I have never met any of the parents involved and they had no idea who I was. Handshakes and congratulatory messages were then followed by an awkward silence as I wondered whether to try to make small talk or not, although I had noticed that people generally passed by quite quickly and so I made a tactical retreat into the crowd of people, hoping that it wasn't badly seen. We then attacked the food and all was good again.

The speeches were apparently good as many laughs were had by 99 of the 100 guests - I noticed at this point that my Finnish comprehension had gone downhill in the 3 years since I left Helsinki. Half of the speeches were also made in Swedish, which I have absolutely no knowledge of and so I concentrated on looking like I knew what was happening and occasionally trying to find some understanding at the bottom of my wine glass. Fortunately a couple of the speeches included amusing photographs of the happy couple projected onto the wall which even I could understand. After this the band came on, the international language of dancing to 60s music broke out among the guests and the free bar was ruthlessly abused. I remember very little of the events afterwards besides ordering a coke at a nightclub and having to stop the taxi for tactical reasons on the way back to M's parents place. Another proud moment. I managed to emerge from bed at 4.30pm the next day, just in time to watch Finland get stuffed by the USA in the ice hockey world championships.

In any case the whole event was well done and I'd like to extend my best wishes again to the happy couple and to the newest addition to their family: a wide-eyed, curious and seemingly easily amused little girl. I think it will be many years before I see a baby expressing such joy at dancing with her dad to MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This"...

In non-wedding news, I thought that in my five years living in Helsinki I had seen it all. It seemed, however that this was not the case. After meeting up with my friend Kuba at an art exhibition he was volunteering at, he invited me to a sauna-and-beer event afterwards. When I turned up, it was to find this:

A home made sauna, whipped up in a car park that very morning. The rocks were placed in a stolen shopping trolley and the fire was lit underneath in a couple of beer crates. Genius.

Next stop - Ukraine in 2 weeks for some more fun and games !

The Italian Jobless

Domodossola, Italy, 31st March 2012


Introducing the newest featuring star of Okei Wapi : ATS.

We are led to believe that the woman next to him was not repulsed by his "early morning face", but was simply tired herself.

I went to school with ATS but hadn't seen him for quite a while. When he said he was coming to visit, the mind immediately started whirring and a plan was hatched to go up to Liechtenstein. The weather forecast a week before departure painted a glorious picture - 23 degrees, blazing sunshine. As the week went by, a slow collapse took place and the night before departure we were assured a grey, rainy day, with a top temperature of 12 degrees. After a long, searching discussion in a Geneva whisky bar, we decided to go for it anyway. The next morning, however, we got up too late and missed the bus which would have made the connection to our train from Geneva central station. The plans were rehashed in a hurry and so, an hour later, we found ourselves on a train bound for Italy.


Switzerland's train network is wonderfully efficient and relatively speedy although there is a price to pay for these comforts and any trip traversing the country costs the equivalent of a small house in most neighbouring countries. Thankfully, a ticket exists which allows the bearer to use the entire Swiss railway network for a day for the bargain bucket price of 35€. Unfortunately, these tickets are only available to Swiss residents. But, fortunately (especially for a pair of unemployed bums such as ourselves), these tickets do not feature the holder's name on them and so I got hold of two such tickets through slightly suspicious means (thanks Joana !!). The Swiss railway network extends over the country's borders at some points and we planned to use this technicality to our great advantage by sneaking over the Italian border to Domodossola. The 5.30am bus had maybe slipped through our fingers but at 6am we were out, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and on our way.

All aboard

The ride down towards the Simplon tunnel and Italy is probably quite nice - as it was, we rode the rails, looking out of the window with glazed eyes, suffering from our crack-of-dawn awakening. We soon shook ourselves awake, though, as we reached Domodossola and stepped out, blinking, into the bright sunshine. I'd thought the first town across the border would be fun to visit although it was only as we left the station that I had absolutely no idea what the place was like. No idea of the size, of what was there, of whether it was interesting or not. After 15 seconds of trying to work out if it was worth being here at all, we spotted the first good sign. A pizzeria, just over the road from the station.


We sat at the terrace, waited and waited, and decided that the waiter probably couldn't see us. After all, we were the only people on this windswept side of the restaurant. We moved to a terrace by the door and he came out. We conjured up our best Italian to indicate that we wanted a menu. 


"Menu ? Pizza ?"
"Ahh! per mangiare !" he exclaimed, gesticulating towards his mouth.
"Si ! Si !" We were getting somewhere.


He ushered us inside and placed us at a table. We wondered why it wasn't possible to eat outside but ordered a couple of glasses of sparkling wine which, amusingly, was served on tap. He delivered the glasses, and fired out a few sentences at a speed which, seemingly, only Italians can muster. We missed about 98% of the sentence but worked out that something would happen in 15 minutes. The gaps were filled in with guesswork and we concluded that the kitchen wasn't yet open but that we'd be receiving the menus soon. The minutes passed, the sparkling slowly went down. After half an hour, we didn't have the menus and the glasses were empty. I returned to the bar and pointed at the sparkling wine taps and was subjected to yet another barrage of Italian. It appeared that we were in the wrong room and so we were ushered a further 20 metres to another table where, it would appear, food could be served. The guy waved us through to the other room but stopped dead at the entrance, seeming to fear some kind of immigration problem if he crossed the threshold. 

Ah, a good nose, nice bubbles... and from the tap, if I'm not mistaken ?

A woman on the other side took us into her care, placing us at a table and spraying us with yet more incomprehensible volleys of sentences. She then smiled and went off to hunt for menus. We took is as some kind of greeting. It's been a while since I've been to a country where I had no idea what was being said to me and I always feel slightly moronic when this does happen. If I'm being spoken to in Armenian or in Xhosa, it doesn't bother me as much. But Italian is so similar to French that I feel I should understand it. Instead of asking politely if my interlocutor speaks another language, I just smile and nod. Miraculously, this doesn't land us in any hot water in Domodossola, and we are served with menus exactly as we wanted. The pizzas were delicious and cost about the same as a small glass of tap water in Switzerland.

When in Domodossola, do as the Domodossolans...

Domodossola will never be a huge tourist magnet, I imagine, purely due to its size. But it does have a charming little old town (all five streets of it) and many pleasant terrace cafes. It was at one of these that we stopped and ordered a Spritz. This delicious cocktail of Aperol, Prosecco and sparkling water was first discovered by my parents in Venice (of course it was known to the Italians prior to that - I use the word discover in the same sense as people describe the Americas having been discovered by Columbus) and I was determined to share the beauty of this refreshing beverage with ATS. In another charming twist, the waitress brought us our drinks and a free platter of snacks, probably worth about twice as much as the drinks themselves. As soon as we'd arrived, it seemed, it was time to leave. We'd planned to meet M in Lausanne for a wild night out at 6, as she was coming straight from work. We popped into a supermarket and bought a bottle of Aperol and three bottles of prosecco (and some plastic cups... just in case) and hopped back onto a train, Switzerland-bound.

Domodossola - you can check out but you can never leave

The 6pm meeting didn't prevent us from stopping in Montreux, a city which is known mostly for being full of money and for being home to a Freddy Mercury statue (and, at one point, to Freddy Mercury himself). We wandered up and down the promenade by the lakefront, admired the scenery, and found a bench to polish off a bottle of Prosecco in plastic cups - a classy act anywhere in the world but particularly admirable in a place like Montreux. We moved on.

View of Freddy in Montreux

View of Montreux

View from Montreux

And a view of a bench in Montreux, housing two classy young gentlemen.

The night in Lausanne was pleasant but slightly less long-lived than we'd imagined. A nice evening the presence of Agou, a friend of ATS's and his Lebanese housemate Kassem (who Agou had called out specially to admire my Hezbollah t-shirt) was followed by an attempted beginning at a night out. ATS and I had been up since the break of day, however, and M had been at work all day. Following her usual protocol, she fell asleep at the table and the two heroes of the day were left to carry her off to the train station.

Finally forgiving the Greeks for Euro 2004

M further cements her reputation as the life and the soul of the party !

And meanwhile, the night train back to Geneva threatens to claim another victim...

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...!