35 – Sao Vincente and Santo Antao

Back in Mindelo

We are back to our everyday life in Mindelo, capital of the Island Sao Vincente, and decide to anchor in the bay after a few days. From here we observe every day the big island across the passage: Santo Antao. Its mountains covered by a cloudy cap, some days more, some days less. After 3 weeks, having checked the weather forecast, we decide to take the ferry and not to sail across to Porto Novo, also to avoid checking the boat in and out of the islands, which is mandatory.

Trip to Santo Antao

The ferry trip from Sao Vincente to Santo Antao is pleasant, so much smoother than Illika bouncing over the waves! To get to the hotel, we take an aluguer (collective minibus for 15 people). Quite overloaded (17 people and luggage on the roof) we arrive at our reserved Eco-Lodge after an 80-minute tricky drive, people getting off from time to time and the driver climbing on the roof to throw down some luggage. We’re stunned about the green overwhelming vegetation and the impressive mountain cliff with a cloud sitting on top of it, facing the hotel on the other side of the valley. Pawpaw, mango, Ignam, avocado, banana, sugarcane grow everywhere possible in the green valleys.

We can’t get enough!

The following two days we discover a wonderful island for hiking. Our hikes of each 4-5 hours are just fabulous with amazing views and vegetation! Every evening, back at the hotel, we jump into the little natural pool full of tadpoles before enjoying showers. After that, a neatly presented buffet (they do their best with what they have) with local dishes waited for us, unfortunately always lukewarm. The first evening they must have miscalculated, as no one had enough food… !

We all agree: we love this island and we consider the extra day we decided to stay counts as our birthday presents. After three days we take the aluguer back to the harbour, this time 23 people for 15 seats and a roof overloaded with luggage! It smells of burnt brakes and clutch every up or down and accelerating to more than 50 km/h isn’t possible or too dangerous. Happily, the driver has a good sense of responsibility. Obviously at that speed we miss the ferry. Luckily there is a second one leaving this evening – or maybe unluckily? 😉

Click on this link to see Alexander’s photo presentation about Sao Vincente and Sao Nicolao: https://youtu.be/A0qex8VC9RM

Back “home”

End of September : after 5 weeks in Mindelo, finally the nights are getting cooler. The sheets are not quite as soaked in the morning, my long hair is not stuck to my neck when I wake up and we actually use a little corner of our empty duvet cover across the hips during the night.

Although it has been raining exceptionally much these past weeks comparing to other years, temperatures have been steadily high and the humidity made you want to jump into the water at any moment of the day. Unfortunately, when the rain gathers all the dust and mess in town and flushes a brown soup into the bay, the colour of the water is not inviting! And we think we now understand our occasional diarrhoea, probably from swimming around the boat not respecting the tidal flow exchanging the bacteria loaded waters for the clean one from the open sea…

Mindelo, daily

In the meantime, we’re getting to know Sao Vincente, or rather Mindelo quite a bit. When we go on shore, we always meet people we know, get greeted by some, have a spontaneous drink, or meet up with others. It’s more like a village feeling. We know our shops, have a favourite baker and market stands for vegetables and fruit. Salad, you need to get in the morning, otherwise there’s none left. We buy the eggs, full milk, and cheese whenever we see them: better have enough than none when you need them! Because here, deliveries are very irregular!

We make our own bread, cakes, and natural yoghurt regularly, always impatient and normally happy to taste the result of our efforts.

Boat schooling

School is working reasonably well, and we are proud of our boys finishing their full programmes for the week with much less discussions than last year… It is, in fact, at moments quite enjoyable!!! Although we didn’t receive the math books for Oliver’s school year, we managed to get a pdf version of the books from a friend 2 days before leaving Switzerland. We’ll get through this! Physics is getting rather complicated, so if anybody has a tip or a contact, we’d be happy for some help.

After the usual mornings of boat schooling, we spend our time shopping (always quite time consuming), fixing things, cleaning, doing laundry, cooking, going to the beach and of course we enjoy more afternoons and evenings with our friend G’île, anchored with his boat Cholgas just beside Illika. On top of that, there are lots of opportunities to exchange tips, talk about technical questions and share experiences with other sailors, on their way through or here since a long time… Always interesting!

Smiling faces in Cabo Verde

We go to visit the other side of the island of Sao Vincente on a bus full of school children, again quite overloaded. This time, it’s 35 people instead of 26, mainly children, in the bus. Like in many other situations, we can hardly believe how tolerant and attentive everyone is. Not talking about how the locals behave towards us, but also how they do between themselves. As soon as another passenger would like to get on, others make place, move over, help with the folding seats, move their bags, sit on top of each other… It always strikes us and warms our hearts when we see them interacting: teasing, playing, laughing, just a little smile, a tap, a gesture, a wave, … All over, all the time. Although there is a lot of poverty, especially in the towns.

What next?

Technically we’re nearly done and ready to sail. (I added a photo on the last post that I had forgotten…34 – The windward islands (via Switzerland) )

The weather is not very steady and it’s not easy to find a good weather window. We’ll be back in the Marina for a couple of days to do our last laundry, fill water, get petrol and get the last load of fresh food. For one, we don’t know when we’ll have the next possibility to do laundry. For 2, yes we have a water maker, but it produces only 5 litres/hour, so we take the easy way on this one, paying 2€/100 litres. Petrol is clearly easier here at the pontoon, than filling jerrycans to bring to the boat by dinghy… Last but not least, the next anchorages are not going to be places where we’ll find a supermarket or a restaurant on the beach – that’s what we gathered from the information we found!

So, soon we’ll be heading south: Santiago, Fogo and Brava, three of the leeward islands “sotavento”. But, as said previously: the plans of sailors are written in the sand…