Four days in the Cape Verde islands and not a single other Brit. But there are
lots of Nancy Dell’Olios twinkling in their diamanté bikinis, and Italian
blokes with handbags.
This is the island of Boa Vista, which, if translated literally, means
beautiful view. It is the most unspoilt beach resort with winter sun this
close to home — a six-hour flight — with long powdery windswept beaches
where you long to be stranded. Dotted around this remote island are small
communities where women carry pots on their heads along streets of brightly
painted Portuguese houses. Much of the island is barren, save for skinny
goats grazing and the odd donkey. But this is a landscape on the brink of
change.
Italians have started colonising the island. Breeze-block pizzerias,
gelaterias, bars playing Grease hits, the odd hotel. And from
November, a charter flight will travel six hours from Gatwick to the
neighbouring island, Sal, opening this African paradise to Britons.
Cape Verde, a former Portuguese colony, is two hours south of the Canaries,
just off the coast of Senegal in West Africa. Tourism here is in its infancy
and is being compared to the Canaries in the 1960s. Little developed, it’s
relatively close to Europe, with a year-round temperature of 21-31C (70-81F)
and, once you get there, cheap. Oh, and you don’t have to take malaria
tablets.
Boa Vista was my favourite of the three islands I visited and is just a
25-minute flight from Sal island. There are no chain hotels. Yet. There are
not many tarred roads. Yet. There is no international airport. But a big
terminal is being built. The current short runway takes only small aircraft
and doesn’t have lights. During night-time emergencies, locals line up
vehicles along the runway, headlights switched on, so that medical planes
can land and take off.
Boa Vista has a population of about 3,500. With plans for hotels totalling
20,000 beds, this won’t be a barren landscape for long. Italian estate
agents are popping up all over the island, and crude apartment blocks that
haven’t involved an architect are shooting up in the dust.
The place to stay is Hotel Parque das Dunas, a complex of bungalows on a
nine-mile (15km) beach. You can walk for hours, finding the odd crab. Or
hire a four-wheel-drive vehicle to take you down miles of bumpy dirt roads
to Santa Monica in the south, where there are more than 12 miles of pristine
beach. On the west of the island is one of the biggest turtle breeding
grounds in the world.
Until Boa Vista is ready for international flights, possibly later this year,
the neighbouring island Sal, with direct flights from Gatwick from November
2, will be an easier option. Most hotels are in Santa Maria, a two-street
town that is currently the centre of Cape Verdean tourism.
Here is a long white strip of a beach with calm waters, a few modest hotels,
some Italian estate agents and the whirring of cement mixers as holiday
apartment blocks spiral behind.
Two recommendations here. The Morabeza is a hotel with beach-view bungalows,
established in the 1960s by a Belgian couple whose daughter, Sophie
Marcellesi, runs it now. The other is the Hotel Odjo d’Agua, which has
probably the best restaurant in town. It has a huge panoramic terrace
hanging over the sea with the sound of waves crashing against the rocks
below.
It was here that I braved sea fingers — perceves — and cracas.
Sea fingers: purply brown fingers with a huge knuckle on the end that you
crack off. Then peel off a bandage-like skin to reveal a sliver of slime
that you dunk in chilli sauce. And if you haven’t gagged by then, swallow. Cracas,
on the other hand, consists of a pile of holey rocks covered with moss. Get
a knitting needle, poke inside, fish out slime, and dunk in chilli.
Slime with chillis. Urgh! Possibly the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted.
And there is more to the culinary downside of paradise. Yes, the lobster is
wonderful and there’s no end to the variety of grilled or fried fish
(grouper is everywhere and tuna is a huge industry). But vegetables and
fruit are scarce on some islands. Most of the papaya, bananas, tomatoes and
peppers, if you can find any, are flown in from Brazil.
The final leg of my journey took me to Santiago island. Here, in contrast,
there are plenty of fruit and vegetables for the inhabitants. This is a
volcanic island with lush palm trees. In the markets women sell small, sweet
mangoes and baby bananas, bunches of fresh herbs and peppers out of buckets.
I stayed in a small village in the mountains, at Quinta da Montanha, run by Lindorfo Marques Ortet. He resettled here three years ago after living in
Bulgaria and Belgium. His ten-room orange hotel with PVC windows hangs
precariously on a hillside. The two big draws here are Lindorfo’s acacia
wood-burning oven and a star-gazing telescope. “I come back — like a
turtle,” he says. “A turtle always returns to the place it is born.”
I woke in the morning to a view of mountains cloaked in mist. Cocks were
crowing, goats bleating, and guitar-based Cape Verdean music played on the
radio with the voices of local heroes such as Cesaria Evoria, Lura and Vadu.
On my last day I visited Cidade Velha, in Santiago. It’s a beach community
established by the Portuguese in the 16th century. It has a black volcanic
stone beach, a few modest houses, an abandoned convent and a ruined fort to
keep out pirates, including Sir Francis Drake.
A church dating from 1495 has just one prominent tombstone in the foreground.
What was so special about this person, I asked my guide. “He was a very kind
Catholic priest and is rumoured to have fathered 40 children in the
village.”
Near by, the village elders were sitting on the steps surrounding the old
slave whipping-post. Boys played table football, the table legs rattling
violently on the cobblestones. The women were laying out the washing on the
streets to dry and laughing children bobbed up and down seal-like in the
sea. One wonders, wistfully, how tourism may change all this.
Need to know
Getting there: Jeannette Hyde travelled with Holiday Options
(0870 4208372, www.holidayoptions.co.uk), which has one-week stays on Sal
from £599, Boa Vista from £801 and Santiago from £778 B&B,
including Gatwick-Sal flights and inter-island trips.
Eight-day island-hopping breaks to all three islands start at £1,245pp,
including B&B and all flights.
Other tour operators: Cape Verde Travel (0845 2702006,
www.capeverdetravel.co.uk), Cape Verde Experience (0845 3302071,
www.capeverdeexperience.com).
Reading: Cape Verde Islands (£13.99, Bradt).
