We left Praia with our rented car and drove along the cost towards Cidade Velha. Cape Verde has (as far as science knows today) not been inhabited before the Europeans came, and when they came, they landed in Ribeira Grande (renamed Cidade Velha, "old town" in the 18th century) on Santiago island. When the Portuguese "discovered" Santiago around 1460, they claimed it for their crown and made Ribeira Grande the first European colonial town in the tropics. They started to explore the archipelago, and Ribeira Grande became a centre for international trade. The Europeans on their way to the southern african colonies, the Caribbeans and Brazil stopped there to load fresh water and food - and slaves. They were brought from Africa and taken to the Americas. Ribeira Grande soon became a multicultural place, the first developed Creole culture. Today, Cidade Velha is part of UNESCO's world heritage - and well worth a visit. My inner historian remembered university courses, I was really excited to see this important - but at the same time very sad - place. We started with a visit of the village, the famous Banana Road, the Pelourinho (a pillory which served to punish slaves) and had lunch right by the sea. Afterwards we visited Forte Real de São Filipe which thrones on a cliff above Cidade Velha. There's a small but nice visitors' centre, and after watching a short (and very interesting!) film about the conservation measures, which were done in collaboration with the locals, we enjoyed a guided tour through the fort. Our guide not only told us about the history of the town, pirate attacks and the story behind the white corner stones of the Fort (they have been brought aboard the ships from Portugal and when the ships left Ribeira Grande, the weight of the stones was replaced by slaves they brought over the Atlantic ocean). He also showed us mango trees and explained that there were local products for sale down in the town. We hadn't seen any signs indicating such offers, and when we told him, he said we should have knocked on the doors of the houses and asked the people about it. Oh well. Not exactly what you would do in Switzerland. But then again, why not? It would have been a chance to buy something nice and at the same time support the local people.
Tourism as a concept has not yet won over Cape Verde. I often felt like a walking Dollar sign when people looked at me, but there were only very few places where you could actually spend your money on souvenirs (let alone postcards, at least on Santiago). On one hand I wish for Cape Verde that they find a way to attract some more tourists and develop sustainable concepts to do so. On the other hand it's very clear to see that this is not the country's most important task right now. When driving through the amazing landscapes, too often we noticed that there's plastic waste everywhere. Nobody cares to collect and recycle it, it would surely take a long time to clean up. Cape Verde does not produce any plastic - this is all imported, and because only in the bigger towns there's something like coordinated garbage disposal, the waste ends up polluting the environment.Tourists coming to see the wonders of nature on these incredibly beautiful islands would probably prefer it to be clean and tidy - but this is clearly asked too much right now.
After having visited Cidade Velha, we started our tour of Santiago. There are two main roads on the island, one goes across the plateau, the other one along the eastern coast. Our plan was to visit the plateau and then drive back to Praia in one day on the coast road.
Our first destination was Rui Vaz in the Pico de Antonia national park. The mountain resort there is called "Quinta da Montanha" and if you ever happen to be in Rui Vaz you should at least spend one night there - the view from the balcony in the morning is simply breathtaking.
The Quinta's owner speaks English and is happy to give his guests informations about where to go hiking. We didn't try our luck with the Pico de Antonia itself because we didn't feel up to it (it's an actual mountain and we didn't bring our alpine equipment after all), but we did quite a bit of walking in the region anyway. The stunning views into the valleys around the plateau are worth every minute of walking in the burning tropical sun.
Rui Vaz is a small village where most houses don't have electricity and the people get their water at the central reservoir (carrying the huge buckets on their heads - or bringing their donkeys to help). For the first time it became really clear to us that Cape Verde, seen from our european perspective, is a poor country. On our first walk in Rui Vaz we met three girls from the village, they collected tiny wild tomatoes (delicious!). We didn't have a common language but they liked that we could take a picture of their neighbour's cow all across the valley with our big zoom lens. I couldn't believe how easily they walked the narrow and steep paths with their flip-flops or even barefoot (we of course wore our trekking shoes).
One day we visited the botanical gardens in São Jorge dos Orgãos, a really nice place. We took a lot of nice photos there and enjoyed to see the tropical flowers. Apparently there was a giant (dead) spider in the toilet, I'm glad I didn't see it. When it comes to animals, the worst you can meet in Cape Verde is actually a centipede, but more about this later. The Passarinha (see picture) is Cape Verde's national bird. Much nicer than spiders or centipedes!
So, saying goodbye to beautiful Rui Vaz, we continued our tour towards Assomada. We wanted to arrive in Tarrafal in the evening, but first we took the chance to see a bit more of the island. Monsieur wanted to visit a dam that was still under construction. You would think it's quite easy to find something that big, but unfortunately street signs are not one of Cape Verde's assets. In any case we drove through a run-down village, people watched us, probably thought we were completely crazy tourists. At least the car didn't have any trouble with the road (that became worse with every mile). Well, long story short, we ended up on a hill, at the end of the road, but in the backyard of an old farmhouse. I don't want to deny that I was quite annoyed with Monsieur who had wanted to see this dam so badly he didn't turn around when I was sure we would never find it. So I chose to wait in the car while he went to see if there was somebody who could show us the way (yesss. The way to the dam). He came back with a wrinkled old lady in tow, followed by a younger woman with a baby girl on her arm and two little boys. The boys were fascinated by the car, the baby girl had probably never seen white people before, and the old woman was incredibly friendly, talking to us in crioulo, fully aware that we didn't understand her. This was one of the warmest, kindest encounters we had in Cape Verde. Unfortunately, we were completely lost and the woman couldn't help us, so we had to drive back through the village where the people - now obviously irritated - stared at us again.
The worst encounter happened only a few hours later when we decided to go to Ribeira da Barca, a small village on the west coast of Santiago. The dirt road wanted us to drive slowly, which gave a group of six or seven young men the chance to stand in our way and finally force us to stop. I'm sure their only goal was to provoke, maybe to scare us, from their perspective we must look like incredibly rich people, driving around in an off-road car. In any case - this time they were successful in scaring tourists. The problem with our car was that the central locking didn't work. So while one of them probably only wanted to try his luck, he managed to open my door. Of course Monsieur reacted like everybody else would - he accelerated and drove away fast. I could close the door again, and so we sat in our car, hearts pounding. Phew. This was the only time someone actually overstepped the line and invaded my personal space. Although this had been a very unpleasant experience, we decided to drive on to Ribeira da Barca, hoping for a quiet evening. But we didn't take into account that it was Good Friday. On Cape Verde, the Easter weekend is for partying. The beautiful beach of Ribeira da Barca was crowded with hundreds of people dancing to music from trucks. We were not really in the mood to stay and celebrate, and there were some dubious guys wanting us to leave our car for them to watch it... We declined and drove back to the main road and onwards to Tarrafal.
