Postby Kathryn-in-Canada » Wed Feb 29, 2012 9:04 pm
Here's my travelog. I got it written, my nails done, won at trivia again (yay!) and finished my assignment. It is past midnight and I'm exhausted but we had a good formal night after the rocky start of arriving at our table with the chief engineer 30 minutes late (our invitation said 8:15 the others said 7:45 - I'm annoyed and will not attend the next formal dinner with crew unless it is with the captain or a very senior officer.)
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The next ports in our trip were in the Cape Verde Islands. Go look them up (hint, off the coast of Africa in the Atlantic - don't mix them up with our next ports in the Canary Islands.)
We stopped at two of the islands, Sao Tiego and Santo Anteo, one in the south and one in the north of the group of islands. The Cape Verdes belonged to Portugal until their independence so are not part of the European Union but have a special relationship with it, and have pegged their currency to the Euro.
Our first stop was in Praia, the capital. We chose not to go on tour here but to just walk around on our own. We covered just under 7 km while ashore, taking the shuttle bus onto the Plateau (an older area of town with the market) and then walking down to along the the beaches and out to the lighthouse on a point at the entrance to the harbour.
I found Praia to be an interesting mixture of Africa and what I imagine Portugal to be like (I've never been, just seen pictures and I've been to the Azores.)
Outside the port was a long line of stalls set up with people selling wares. Here poverty was evident. Once we were up on the Plateau and for the rest of time walking around Praia, the poverty wasn't as noticeable. The market on the Plateau was stunning for its colours, amazing selection and quantity of fruits and vegetable and cleanliness. It was crowded and bustling, but felt prosperous, not desperate (as the market in Banjul had felt.) We were left on our own, not hassled at all.
After walking around a little on the Plateau, we walked down a staircase to the valley between plateaus and began our more strenuous walk out to the lighthouse.
Along the beach we came to a workout park. The equipment was in good shape and simple design. For instance, on one piece you sit on the chair and pull down on the bars above, pulling your weight up (but it is leveraged in some way so wasn't hard to do.) The park was sponsored by Coke, which I found amusing!
The city has about 115,000 people but everyone seemed to be in cars. This was first place we've been since South Africa with a bus system. So very auto oriented. Praia is the capital of Cape Verde so we walked past numerous embassies.
Turns out the lighthouse isn't a ruin but is actually functioning and was manned (at least we think he was the keeper - he could have been a workman of some sort.) Because we weren't thinking it was used, we walked through the door in the high wall into the inner courtyard. The keeper came out and asked if we spoke Portuguese? Us: No, English? Him: No, Espanol? Us: No, Francais? Him: No. Oh well, we made do. He asked if we were from the ship (across the harbour from the light) and we indicated yes, and that we had walked. He indicated we were strong for doing that. He commented on the wind and we asked if it was always like that and he said no, just 3 months of the year. Although now we suspect maybe he was saying three months it isn't windy. Anyway, it was a short but pleasant exchange.
We walked from there back to town. It was too early for lunch so none of the restaurants we walked past were open.
We walked on a slightly different route which eliminated one hill and then up the stairs back onto the Plateau. We walked around a bit more, seeing a nursery school, checking out a grocery store and coming across a woman selling fish door to door carrying one basket of live fish, in water, on her head and another in her arms.
We went back to the ship after this and had a quiet afternoon on board.
The lecturer had gone hiking in the hills and I wanted to go but the length he had in mind (15 km) and the imprecision of his plans and instructions made me too nervous. He had a delightful day with the wife of another lecturer. They took a taxi to a small village, found the path and hiked along it. Unfortunately, they kept coming to cross-roads and didn't know what to do. There were people walking the paths who would give them long sets of instructions in Creole or Portuguese but that didn't help. Finally some school children came along and walked with them, leading them out into a village. There they stood waiting. Roddy didn't know what was expected but finally the school bus came along! They got on the bus with the children and ended up at the school where the best student was brought out to display his English skills and explained the local bus system to them. They took a bus back to town and the shuttle back to the ship and were back by 2. I would have been freaking out so I'm glad I didn't go with them, on the other hand, I envy them their adventure!
We set sail a bit late (I can't recall what the delay was, but remember a delay) and arrived the following morning in Porto Novo on San Anteo, one of the northern islands. When we woke up in the morning, I turned on the tv and was shocked to see 70 - 80 kph winds. Then we anchored, instead of berthing because the pier expansion project was not finished on time and the port agent had failed to inform Silver Sea of this fact! I can just imagine the words on the bridge when they arrived in the morning to find no pier!
We were in the shelter of the island for a few minutes and the winds went calm so we enjoyed our breakfast outside. But the winds were picking up and by the time we were to tender into the port, it was pretty rough.
There were about 70 of us on the tour, spread over 4 small tour buses. We lucked out with a guide who spoke very good English. He had a degree in English from the Cape Verde University and had spent a year in Austria learning hospitality management. He worked as a teacher and is hoping to do a masters degree in England at some point. The person organizing the tour was not so gifted and the tour had many comical moments because it was so poorly run.
This island is volcanic and is arid on one side and lush on the other. They don't get storms, they just “make them there and send them across the Atlantic” (!) but it was very windy.
This may be the only time I rave about a road but we took the most amazing road, all hand made, over the mountain range that runs along the centre of the island. I might not have taken the tour had I fully understood what the road would be like (remember my fear of heights) but if I had to be staring at a road while desperately trying to ignore the steep drop off on the other side of the bus, there is probably no more beautiful a road to be staring at.
The views were stunning (I'm not too bad with heights if I'm standing on the ground, just not keen on them when I have something between me and the ground.)
After a 2 hour drive we finally got close to sea level on the other side of the mountain. At this point we drove up a dry river valley to see a small village church. The guests in another bus revolted and demanded a pit-stop so we ended up using the washrooms at the local high school. Our guide was busy hugging and kissing many of the teachers who were friends of his from university so I suspect he had something to do with that detour. It was a wonderful detour.
This beautiful school was a gift from the country of Luxembourg. Most of the touches of modernity we saw were gifts from Europe, the majority were from Luxembourg, the reason given was that a large number of Cape Verdeans had emigrated to Luxembourg and were such good workers helping to build that country that Luxembourg wanted to repay the favour by helping out Cape Verde. Cape Verde is one of the poorest nations in Africa. It didn't seem poor like The Gambia because we never saw terrible poverty, but it was as if it was stuck in a time warp. Up in the mountains people lived in houses built from the rocks or more modern ones were of cinder block but they were small (100 - 200 square feet) and there is no running water so people walk miles to get water from reservoirs and carry it back on mules. The unemployment rate on the island is about 40% and we saw a lot of men just sitting about. Most of the labour we saw was by hand, cutting sugar cane and carrying out of the field in large bundles on one's head.
Our guide was very appreciative of the funding received to build a decent road (asphalt, not cobblestone as all other roads were) and modern buildings. The school was built in 2006 and was still in pristine condition after 6 years so it seems the gifts are well cared for.
After the stop to tour the church, we headed to Ponta do Sol for lunch. We had a half hour to walk around this little town after a lovely buffet lunch. I tried Guarana Antartica, a Brazilian soft drink which was very good. Ponta do Sol used to have the airport for the island but there was a crash that killed 18 people in the late 90's and the airport was deemed too dangerous after that. So now the only link with the other islands is by sea, with daily ferry service leaving from Porto Novo on the other side of the island.
The men of the village seemed to all be at the waterfront. The fishermen were on the
beach below, cleaning their catch and the men in the shelter were just hanging around, playing a card game.
The streets were basically deserted. I'm assuming the women were working inside the houses.
We saw a few on the the street with children.
After lunch we drove back along the shore for a bit, turning to drive up a river valley to see some of the traditional agriculture.
Turning our buses around was a big trick. The tour had been badly run and our guide knew of a place up the valley where there was enough room to turn around, but to' save time', the first bus started the turnaround about 5 minutes too early. He made a 24 point turn with our guide just sitting on the wall at the edge of the road, shaking his head. He convinced the next bus in the line to go further on and even he did the turnaround too early, but made it in 6 points, as did the rest of the buses. In the meantime, the first bus had to wait for all of us so no time was saved.
Finally, we hit a piece of highway financed by the European Union and Italy. It included the first tunnel in Cape Verde.
For about 15 km, we had a quieter ride. Cobblestones are noisy. Even with the 'better' road, the speed limit was still 50 kph and it took 2 hours for us to return to Porto Novo after lunch even without going over the mountain range. Back on the arid side of the range, the scenery turned bleak again. Then a glimpse of our ship. Home!
Well, not quite. It was 4 p.m., the original end time of the tour but I knew we still had to have refreshments at a hotel. So we were taken to a lovely resort and offered food. A rather cranky group barely touched what was offered as we were anxious to get back. The last tender was at 4:30 and while we knew they wouldn't leave without us, I had been concerned because it was now awfully rough and I only saw one tender at the dock waiting for us (we had come over in two.)
Eventually, we were loaded back onto the buses and taken back to the pier. We were all loaded onto the tender for what we knew would be a rough crossing back to the ship and then waited for all the crew and pier-side paraphernalia (podium, stanchions and ropes) to be loaded onto the tender. It was rough. Not unbearable but we had tucked ourselves in the very back corner, well away from the open sides. Sure enough, a number of passengers were completely soaked when we came alongside the ship and the waves came up between the tender and the platform.
Home at last, I high-tailed it to trivia (our team won!) and heard what I had suspected. As the wind came up again, the tender service was suspended and by noon the captain had pulled up anchor as well.
We were very tired from the day so we had our pre-dinner snack and then ordered in a light dinner and watched the movie Casablanca in preparation for our next leg of the journey.
So that's our adventures on Cape Verde. I'm very glad I didn't understand how to decode the tour description because if I had known about the steep roads I may have chickened out. Tonight at dinner someone explained that I should avoid all tours with vistas and panoramic views! Duly noted.
I was right this was a great day for it! 
That means getting "up & at 'em" earlier than I normally do. Have to run an errand for DMother and then take my car to the shop for an oil change & other hopefully minor repairs. Should have the car at the mechanic shop around 8:00 a.m., but that won't happen. Shooting for 9 am now.
