Cape Verde Islands (December 2006)
16 December 2006 dans Kite Surfing Cape Verde
Notes on a Small Island …
… Bruno and Mat’s trip to Cape Verde.
Flights (Astraeus)
Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, noted that the life of the English
peasant was nasty, brutish and short. Nigel Barley, the 20th Century
English anthropologist, noted that international air travel was
nasty, brutish and long. Astraeus is designed to carry the one, via
the other. So here we are…
Astraeus charges 20 pounds to take your kiteboard bag one way. So
that’s an extra 40 pounds. But on the plus side, one you’ve paid
them, they don’t care how much your luggage weighs (mine was more
than twice over the limit).
Tip: go to Maplin and buy an airline audio to 3.5mm stereo jack
adapter - so you can plug your iPod headphones into the airliner
audio system, just in case Astraeus ever show a movie you want to
watch. It’s bound to happen eventually, and then you’ll be ready.
According to Astraeus, the flight takes “approximately” five hours.
In fact, it takes six hours. Which is, of course, approximately
five. But it all sorts itself out because, although the pilot told
us that Cape Verde was in the same time zone as the UK, a steward
correctly pointed out that Cape Verde is one hour behind. Glad the
pilot had satnav.
Transfers
The official account has it that the Cape Verde island of Sal has an
airport. A more descriptive account might be that the island of Sal
is an airport. The island is short, the runway is long (so was the
visa queue, but I digress. We queued for a visa, only to be told
that we had one. Cool.)
But you still need to get to the hotel. The Morabeza has a minibus,
which operates a strict policy: they’ll take you, if they feel like
it. We were lucky on the way in to the resort, but had to get a
pickup truck taxi on our return. Three of us kitesurfers took that
return taxi, which cost a total of 20 Euros - not a lot of money, but
you’d better have the cash.
Hotel (Morabeza)
The Morabeza hotel is a slightly schizophrenic place: the public
spaces are elegant and well-kept, whereas the rooms suggest a youth
hostel that has fallen on hard times. Mosquitos exist here. Or
rather thrive. The Cape Verde 1000 Escudos banknote in fact features
a locust, which suggests that insect plagues are not generally unknown.
We had a little electric / chemical anti-mosquito device bough at
Gatwick airport, which seems to have the same effect on mosquitos as
big waves have on kitesurfers: they look on it as a challenge, rather
than a threat. Use plenty of Jungle Formula.
The South Beach (Santa Maria Beach)
The hotel is set on a beautiful sandy beach, but … DON’T KITESURF
HERE.
Just believe me. Oh, okay, I’ll explain why…
* Wind - The prevailing wind is cross-shore, and slightly off. So as
well as being dangerous, it’s extremely gusty and / or variable. You
can just about get away with a bow kite with lots of depower range,
but a C kite will get most people into trouble. Forget it, there’s
much better in store.
* People - Way too many! I nearly crushed three people when I got
lofted while launching a kite (see gusty, above). Landing a kite
here is also hard because, although there are spaces amongst the
sunbathers, they’re never where you need them.
* Security - I had my camera stolen out of my kit bag on the first
day. That means someone rooted through my big black kit bag in order
to find a small black camera bag at the bottom, covered in other stuff.
The only plus side of the south beach was the ample (I choose my
words carefully) presence of very fit, bikinied young women. But
Sharks Bay is what matters …. surely …
The East Beach (Sharks Bay)
THIS IS PROBABLY THE FINEST SPOT WE’VE EVER KITESURFED
Hard to find. Get a taxi - go to the Morabeza reception, and you’ll
get a 4WD pickup, with room for your gear and the capability to off-
road across lots of sand. The taxi will come back for you at a
prescribed time. Pay the driver at the end of the return trip.
You now have a dream of how you always wanted Shoreham beach to be.
Let’s get specific here:
* soft sand
* gently rolling, structured waves - not the big chop that
pretends to be waves at Shoreham
* cross-on or onshore wind
* warm water - no wetsuit needed at all
* hazy bright sunshine
* oh, why the bloody hell did I come back to England?
If you can look after yourself on the water, and want to progress to
waves, this has to be the place to go.
We had winds of 16 to 25 kts every day. Couldn’t have been better.
We were told that later in the winter, the winds would get stronger.
That could be a problem for some. The only thing that slowed me down
was gut rot (see Eating, below).
Whatever Cape Verde’s limitations (of which there are some), this
beach makes up for them.
The Kitesurf Centre (Surf Zone)
Unless you are getting lessons, don’t bother going here. The South
Beach has two kitesurf centres: Surf Zone is allied to WaveRiders,
and is nearest to the Morabeza hotel. The other is a short way east
along the beach, and is more friendly and better equipped. (The
other is also a Club Natalie Simone like the Menaville in Safaga -
why isn’t WaveRiders working with them?)
For the experienced kitesurfer, the only function of Surf Zone would
be to store your stuff. But this doesn’t make sense, because - if
you are going to Sharks Bay every day - then Surf Zone is a major
detour on your route from hotel room to taxi. So keep your gear in or
outside your own hotel room and not at Surf Zone - it’ll dry better,
and you’ll save on the Surf Zone storage fees.
Surf Zone has no cafe of its own or meeting place for kitesurfers,
and has no facility to wash or dry kites. It can only store gear in
big locked boxes where it can’t dry. We got the introductory talk
from its staff whose main points were:
* don’t leave valuables on the Sharks Bay beach (RUBBISH!
everything is safe in Sharks Bay, it’s the South Beach that’s the problem.)
* we close at 5:30 sharp because, well, we want to
* we did say 5:30, right?
* please remember the bit about 5:30, we seriously don’t want to work longer than we have to
They told us that there was a rescue boat that charge something like
15 Euros per rescue. But I never saw it. Fuck off.
Eating
The trip was B&B only. That makes it more expensive than you’d
think, because food prices on Sal are, well, European. And the
breakfast is not going to keep you going for long. Lunch and supper
at the Morabeza are good if unremarkable.
The star eatery has to be Restaurant Tipico - a big yellow unmissable
shack on the beach, near the hotel. No food ’till 8pm, but it’s
worth the wait. Plus a Creole band which, once the brass section has
gone off for the evening, makes some interesting sounds - I never
realised the full potential of a rusty iron L beam and a table knife
until I came here. Plus a dancer who would restore a faith in
humanity in the suicidally depressed. I personally blame Restraunt
Tipico for a disorder that still prevents me venturing too far from
the nearest toilet. but hey, it was worth it.
Getting About
Don’t. The town of Santa Maria is a sad place, with neither the
energy of Africa nor the colour of the Caribbean. We talked to
people who hired a car and travelled round the island (this probably
took them about an hour). They reported that the rest of the island
was much the same. Shark’s Bay is best reached by pickup taxi, and
that’s the only place to head.
Getting About
