Teepee For My Bunghole

 

So I put some of the pics up from my excellent walks in Santa Antau. Now remember what I said – in no way do my horrid photos compare to the beauty of this island. I only put up a few miserable ones and it was difficult to choose them due to my limited time. Also… ag, just go see the place for yourself! It’s stunning!

Yep, let me wys yous that Santa Antau is probaby the most beautiful island in Cape Verde and and if you do come here, don’t leave without seeing this island.

Yesterday I walked up a valley from a village called Paul but pronounced with a cool accent so that it rhymes with ‘towel’. The valley puts the ‘verde’ in ‘Cape Verde’ and I don’t think photos will ever appreciate the detail of the beauty of this valley. Sugar cane, bananas, farms on the sides of mountains, stone houses, cool people.

I dunno if it’s the Cape Verdeans culture or the Portugese or the previous communist government, but someone made them put a lot of effort into developing this region. It’s all cobbelstoned roads and every inch of the slopes that can be levelled and farmed, is and it all looks like it took generations of work. I mean, they’re even using aqueducts all over the place – that’s like the original old school water pipes, ma broer!

And then today I take a walk in the other direction thinking it couldn’t be as mal and it turns out to be spectacular! This cobbelstoned path that hugs the cliffs along the beach. The walk took five hours but I didn’t even feel it (okay, maybe a little.) How they built this path in the first place is beyond me but it is exce-fucken-lent.

So I’ll post some pics soon mainly because I ran out of space on my memory card but pay attention to the detail in them people because after so much beauty I just didn’t feel adequate enough to pick out tiny bite size pieces and say ‘this little part is worthy of note’ or ‘that little part is worthy of note’ because it was all on such a majestic scale.

Okay, so I was loving Mindelo so much that if so many people hadn’t been telling that I MUST see this island, I would still be sleeping rather than being fresh from the 8am ferry to Santa Antau. I just seems like such a rush with only being able to come here for two days after having so much time to get to know other places that I gave serious thought to forgetting this place and chilling in Mindelo.

But I’m kak glad I came. Already the drive from Porto Novo to Riberio Grande (and then to Ponte Do Sol) was brilliant. Just like the drive on San Tiago from Tarrafel to Praia, this was also through the mountains and just as spectacular. Of course, with my vertigo I was always halfway between checking the views and also trying not to wet my pants. There was even some forest which in Cape Verde (which isn’t green and isn’t a cape) is quite unique. My camera failed to capture the essence of both drives though despite my best efforts.

Anyway, I’ve checked into a nice sorta place and am now ready to do my whirlwind runabout of this island and looking forward to see if it’s as beautiful as everyone says. So far, it has been.

Usually I try to write something as soon as I can when I get someplace new so that I give my impressions fresh off the block but I’m unusually drained after the 14 hour (boring) ferry ride from Praia to Mindelo, Sao Vicente Island. Maybe its because I’ve been missioning in the midday heat finding a room, internet cafe and the other usual reconnaisance. Maybe I’ll write something soon.

Some of you might have noticed that I keep my hair kinda long of late. So when I want to cut it, the length I want is longer than what a machine would cut it. This means I have to find a barber (hairdressers don’t seem to want to deal with me) that can use a scissors and that really has become a harrowing mission. Something I’ve learnt from travelling around is that you gotta choose the old barbers. The old guys have been around since scissors was the only way to cut hair and so at least they know how to use it. It’s a pity that their doesn’t seem to be much old schoolers around, only pants-hanging, hip hop R and B, what’s-up-bro, I’m-a-gangsta youngsters.

I mean, I think it’s perfectly obvious that if some asks you to only cut the tips off of long curly hair that you have got to employ some method of getting to the ends of the curly hair so that you can cut it. But no, the method apprently is to rush in with all the subtlety of a hedge trimmimg gardener (admittedly there were startling similarities between my head and a hedge at the time). To tell you the truth, I should have shoved the idiot’s cornrolled head up into his, no doubt, cornrolled ass. He knew nothing about cutting hair! I tried to patiently explain but he diligently watched my elaborate mimes and listened nodding to my English/French/Portuguese directions and went heedlessly on continuing his pedagogical application of The Idiot’s Guide to Being an Idiot.

I can’t apportion all the blame away from myself. It is after all the second or third time I make a hopeless choice of barbers in my travels and I watch in horror as my politeness comes to an end just after its too late to stop the butchering. Then I have to sit it out in agony, waiting for the my hair to resemble some measure of symmetry before I can ask them to stop. Please, please stop. And another thing: why do barbers always have to do this one or two clip-clips of empty air above your head just before they finally finish? Is it embellish their image of being the ultimate Class A perfectionist? Or is it to give you some comforting sort of closure?

At least this time I managed an intervention before I lost too much hair, unlike the idiots in Morocco who cut everything level down when they felt the hair was uneven and I was left the exact amount left on my head that they were supposed to cut off.

Anyway, I’m off to my hotel room to do some trimming in the bathroom mirror.

Actually Praia is the capital on the other side of Sathiago island. I’m in Tarrafel which is a smaller but more beautiful city. Unlike Sal and Boa Vista, which looked like someone spat some houses along with some fishermen and tourists onto the land, this place actually has some life. The drive from Tarrafel to Praia is nothing short of fantastic. The driver motor’s along the cobblestoned mountain roads passing villages, incredible views and stunning peaks.

I meant to take a local ferry to get here from Boa Vista but a family I knew from Dakar offered me a ride on their boat. There wasn’t much wind so we took quite long for this distance but it was a cool trip nonetheless. They even caught a 9kg fish just before we reached land. Just in time for an arrival lunch.

It’s fun though being a landlubber again and back on the backpacking scene, even though that’s rare here. I forgot how much I missed my independence. Boats are cool (and cheap to live on) but it also hampers you in other ways. I’m supposed to start thinking about getting back home now but it seems like I’ve just recently started travelling again.

And now that I think about it, somewhere along the way I was supposed to think up a way to keep travelling infinitely but I must have forgotten to do that because apparently I can’t go on travelling forever. Or so it seems.

I’m on another island now but you’ll have to wait for later for more info on that. I want to tell you about Boa Vista and its beautiful light.

We went one day to braai [barbeque] a fish head somewhere along the beach near a small oasis (it’s the best way of preparing the head of a tuna). The light was crystal clear. The sand, bushes and mountains in the background were spectacularly sharp. The water was also spectacular and some turtles swam nearby just to add some more exotic flavour.

It was heaven for taking pictures, especially the orange dusk light and I would have taken more pictures if I wasn’t so busy enjoying the view (and fish head).

Today’s Lesson: Just because the bank doesn’t accept your card, it doesn’t mean the one across the road with the same name won’t accept it.

Also: Don’t expect the staff of the bank to volunteer this information.

Cape Verde doesn’t accept Mastercard only Visa. This means I can’t draw money. Western Union doesn’t operate from South Africa anymore after accusations that the system was being used to launder money. This means I can’t get someone to send me money. Tomorrow the boat leaves without me and I’ll be left here with just under 100 Euro in my pocket. Enough for a few days and after that, after that I might just be a little bit screwed. [Insert nervous laugh here]

Yep yep, photo time. I’ve added some photos. Not many, but at least you’ll get some idea of the architecture and environment of Cape Verde. Also you’ll get some pics to go with the stuff I’ve been writing.