Comments and articles from visitors to the Cape Verde islands

The Hotel Tropico is delightful: comfortable rooms, airy reception areas, very quiet round the pool, except on weekends. At the moment it seems more geared to business travellers than holidaymakers but has a ‘country club’ air at weekends when diplomatic families come to enjoy the pool: one of only two in Praia available to the public. The staff seem quite reserved but perhaps this derives from shyness – after a couple of days we soon had them chatting and smiling. Breakfast was cooked to order and now has a new item on the menu: fried bread! The kitchen’s first reaction to the request was one of anxious bafflement but after instructions they served it fried to perfection and it turned up automatically on subsequent days.

Praia has very well hidden charms! Be prepared for a lot of litter; public urination (no public lavatories means no alternative); crumbling ex-Colonial buildings; and a modern quarter were the modern architecture bends toward Sino-Stalinesque, many of the building projects having been supported by China. There is dust everywhere and as you drive out of Praia the hillsides for miles are married with concrete and tin shanties. There are no restaurants were you could congratulate yourself on a gastronomic find but food isn’t everything and we can recommend a couple of views alone and for the charming service as well as perfectly acceptable cooking: the ‘O Poeta’ next door to the Portuguese Embassy and five minutes steep walk from the Tropico with wonderful views from its verandas over the sea and City; and the ‘A Falesia’, again only ten minutes walk from Tropico, just beyond the Praia Mar Hotel on road towards Quebra-Canela beach, hanging above a quiet bay so you can listen to the surf as you dine and admire the twinkling lights of the Praia Mar dancing on the waves. In the city, amid the hubbub of Avenida Cidade de Lisboa you will fin a Spanish restaurant ‘Marisqueria’ well hidden from view with tarpaulins and netting, but nevertheless picturesque and rustic ‘inside’ (still tarpaulins and netting!) with swaying lanterns and gourds hanging from the ceilings, checked tablecloths, candles and a Spanish proprietor who produces some very tasty fish stews and paellas, and a delicious roast pork dish which was succulent beyond belief. The two ‘Sofia’ internet cafés on the Plateau are good for a pause for a much needed beer, particularly the one in the Palacio Cultura in Avendia Amilcar Cabral, which has an interesting bookshop on the ground floor were you can buy some very attractive ‘coffee table’ photographic records of Cabo Verde and that very rare article: the post card!! Shopping of any note is limited to the two colourful markets and, in Rua Andrade Corvo, just opposite the cinema, a beautiful little jewellers selling silver, gold and ebony artefacts from Mauritania.

There are a few beaches on Santiago that merit comment: Sao Francisco and Tarrefal are the best, but if you are touring Cabo Verde Islands they would not be worth a mention compared with the stupendous beaches on Maio and Sal. The town beaches at Praia have khaki/black sand, so look unappealing, but if you don’t mind sunbathing on lava rocks there are some wonderful natural pools with crystal clear water just beyond Quebra-Canela Beach.

The natural topography of Santiago is stunning; stupendous mountains contorted into monstrous shapes in varying shades from dun to copper with the occasional grey river bed ‘wadi’ to provide a relief of dusty green. The villages are mainly unattractive – you have to remember this is a poor country and the people have to make do and mend – and are marred by litter, the most offensive being the ubiquitous carried bags snagged on the acacias for miles around. Having said that you can wonder around freely – people are very friendly – and it is always fascinating to have a glimpse of a life very different from ours, with all manner of livestock roaming the streets, and puppies, children and kittens tumbling together in the dust. Driving is pleasure with the cobbled roads mainly in a good state of repair with miles of open views between the villages. Cidade Velha is a notable exception to this rather downbeat description of Santiagan village life; here you will find well-maintained cottages, a lively square by a curvaceous beach, an impressive fort with even more impressive views, well-maintained monuments and a ribeira (my ‘dry river bed’ wadi’!) that winds lushly back through the hills for a couple of miles.

If you do tour the island – which will take the best part of a leisurely couple of days – take picnics and plenty of water with you: it is very difficult to find food once you are out on the road, Tarrefal being the only place we found that offered snacks as we would understand them, and this on the terrace of a small hotel overlooking the beach.

A couple of practical points: arriving at Praia in the early hours of the morning we were charged 12 Euros for the drive to the hotel. Once we’d got our bearings we realised how short that distance was! The next time - in the daytime – we negotiated to 3 Euros.

Your agents – the staff of Cabo Verde Tourist office – were superb: charming, efficient and nothing was to much trouble. We had intended to stay our entire holiday at Santiago but in all honesty, I didn’t think it would be enough to satisfy most travellers for more than three or four days. On the evening of the third day we decided we wanted to decamp and explore Maio. In two shakes [sorry, however hard we racked our brains we couldn’t remember her name!] had sorted our flights for the following morning and booked us in the Bela Vista. They transferred our booking crediting or unused accommodation at the Tropico, so there was nothing left to pay. By lunch time the following day we had been picked up from the airport by Bela Vista’s courtesy truck, had dumped our bags and were sipping cold beer out side the Tutti Frutti in Porto Ingles – the capital and only town in Maio.

If you need to chill out in absolute calm and peace, Maio may well be the place for you. Porto Ingles is charming, colourfully painted little town scrambling up the hillside above the sea towards the cathedral, with a couple of shaded squares hung with bougainvillea and hibiscus. The town beach is a crescent-shaped slick of pale gold sand sliding of into the distance into a sea of every sparkling shade of green and blue.

Maio only has nine miles of paved roads so there is very limited vehicle ownership: this means no car hire, but also means that if you do manage to find yourself some way of getting about then exploring the island is a dream. Public transport is created for by 4x4 pick-ups that simply circle the island one way or another with people jumping on and off as they wish. This is a really good fun way of seeing the island – most of the driving is, of necessity, off road! – and of interacting with the local population, and although the time tables may be erratic, there is nowhere on Maio that requires punctuality! We actually borrowed a pick-up for a couple of days and ambled at our own pace through costal scrub, along miles of pale straw-gold beaches, up vertiginous mountain sides, along dried up river beds and through picturesque pastel painted villages.

There is no litter on Maio! Neither are there sign posts, obvious tracks or any sign of humanity between the villages, so you need to be self-sufficient and sensible, well prepared with food, drink and your first aid kit and not given to panicking. Having said that you need to have an adventurous spirit but haven’t had much opportunity to put it into practise, then Maio offers a gentle initiation: you can only be lost for so long on a small island.

The Bela Vista was wonderfully peaceful: about 4 miles from Porto Ingles, it is a series of very attractive stone-built cottages set in a quadrangle round a garden and large pool. Our cottage faced the sea and we could step down from our terrace straight onto the beach.

Porto Ingles has a couple of restaurants – both Italian – the Tutti Frutti and the Trattoria. We ate at the Tutti Frutti and from then on had no reason to need to check out the Trattoria. How amazing that in such a backwater you are able to find superb food. Italian Alberto and his Venezuelan wife Brenda are both sailors home from sea. They both love their quiet life by the ocean, and love cooking and entertaining. Over our first beer in Maio – and then a leisurely pasta lunch – we discussed with Alberto what he had available for us to eat that evening. We came back later and the candles had been lit, the wine was breathing and he produced simple dishes cooked to perfection: crisp but softly melting sauté potatoes, vegetables ‘al dente’ in a tissue thin batter and Brazilian steaks: nearly two inches thick of succulent tenderness. Brenda’s contribution was a seductively smooth orange crème brulee with glass-brittle caramel cap. All washed own with a wine from the Island of Fogo, the most southerly wine-producing region in the northern hemisphere. No wonder that we didn’t bother trying anywhere else! For people that can’t resist the buying urge, Brenda has a small boutique along side he restaurant were she sells artefacts gathered from their travels through the Pacific and Indian oceans, South American and African jewellery and great beach water from Brazil and Venezuela.

It was quite a wrench to leave Maio – I had forgotten what a pleasure it is to have absolutely noting to do and I felt the most rested I have for years. But it was onward to Sal, which I had been very snobby about, ever since I read that it was the one island properly geared for tourism.

The first thing that strikes you as you fly up the coast of Sal is that it seems to be completely surrounded by beach and the most extraordinary iridescent hues of king fisher blue/green sea.

As you come into land the island pretty much resembles a heap of ash, which I guess, apart from the sand, it is. At its most northerly extremity it has a couple of mountains, but they are small fry compared with Maio and have nothing of the overpowering drama of Santiago’s jagged peaks. The airport is joined to the capital town, Santa Maria, by a tarmac’d dual carriage way and as you approach the town you can’t help but be struck by the amount of new building that is going on. This served only to confirm my first impression that Sal was going to be somewhere between Benidorm and Barbados on the mass tourism scale and I had already decided I didn’t like it. We were not booked to stay anywhere because we were flying out at 1:00am the following morning so we had 12 hours to kill which was as much as I thought I would be able to stand.

The Odjo d’Agua hotel sits right on a promontory in the middle of town, separating to hugely long stretches of beach. Indeed, it’s cocktail terrace raises straight out of the sea, so you can sit on the balustrade with your sundowner spotting bejewelled tropical fish without so much as your mask and bikini! We decided this would do as our base, and the very helpful staff said we could leave our bags and they would keep an eye on them for us. This made life much easier and reminds me at this point to offer your clients a further tip: travel light. We took a small rucksack each and still didn’t use everything! Getting from island to island in Cabo Verde is very easy, so why spoil it by having to much baggage?!

Sal is indeed geared for tourism: hotels line the beach as you walk west and it is very possible to take part in an imaginable beach or water activity from volleyball to kite surfing to big game fishing. Beach shack restaurants abound and there is a certain amount of pester-power from Senegalese itinerant pedlars behung with faux D&G sunglasses and Accurist watches. BUT the hotels are low rise and have attractive gardens that open on to the beach, the beach is HUGE so annual tourism growth would have to be in the triple digits for a few decades before you would notice the difference and the government is actively taking measures to dissuade the Senegalese from coming to Cabo Verde. We sat on a dilapidated jetty petting a couple of friendly looking local dogs, watching the Santa Maria kids diving and playing, and the game boats unloading huge marlin, sail fish and tuna. Grudgingly I had to admit that Sal is a pretty nice place if the beach is your bag

The town of Santa Maria is very attractive: it is in a good state of repair with well-preserved and colourful indigenous buildings. There are shady and flower-filled squares, attractive restaurants and cafés and the tempting shops that you want to browse and buy in – apart from Brenda’s and the Mauritanian jewellers in Praia, a first for Cabo Verde! There’s quite a bit of music in the streets but remember that music is a key export of Cabo Verde and an integral part of their culture

Eastwards the beach – still an apparently infinite sweep of blonde sand – is much quieter and lined only with unobstructed private villas.

After dinner in a traditional restaurant in the centre of town, listening to a group of musicians playing in the garden square in the garden square we strolled back to the Odjo d’Agua for a night cap before our taxi was due to collect us. This is a lovely hotel with it’s own private beach, a small and shady swimming pool (you start to value shade a lot in Cabo Verde!) an open air restaurant, friendly staff and of course a beautiful terrace. With the terrace lights on, we could still look over the balustrade and watch the multi-colour fish, the rising moon, the lights strung along the beach and listen to the sigh and fall of the waves and a distant African beat from somewhere in town.

Our taxi driver came bang on time and as we expected: our experience of Cabo Verde is that everyone – from the airline staff, to the tourist office, to the hotel employees to the man in the street – is utterly reliable.

I hope these notes will encourage your clients to give Cabo Verde a go: we will certainly be going back to check out some of the other islands.