Sao Nicolau
Amoret
Sat 4 Apr 2009 10:52
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Having been joned by Gary Aiken and Flicky
Laxton in Sal, we finally left for Sao Nicolau. A relief to leave the very rolly
anchorage at Santa Maria as we headed out in the late afternoon sunshine on a
WNW course to take us across the 60M gap to Sao Nicolau then along its south
coast. The wind was mainly around ENE F5, making things a bit uncomfortably
downwind so that Amoret kept trying to round up despite two reefs in the main.
The only incident in an otherwise benign night was when Olivia and I sighted a
ship's lights which came nearer ... and nearer ... and nearer. It became fairly
clear that it was a freighter coming over to see what we were but getting
dangerously close. After showing us both sides and then his bow, he made a very
non-col-regs turn to port, passing about 200m ahead of us, then slowly
vanished into the night. Scary! We rounded the southern peninsula of Sao
Nicolau in early morning then headed along the SW coast towards the
main Port of Tarrafal. The port is protected by a mole providing berths for
freighters. We anchored off the beach side of the harbour just outside
a small German yacht.
Tarrafal is a sleepy town in which everyone seemed
friendly, including the maritime police and other officials. After Criolu
and Portuguese, French seemed to be quite widely spoken, which was handy.During
a shore run Flicky and Gary arranged an aluguer to take us across to the
capital, Ribiera Brava, and back next day. The girls sat inside
and the blokes outside, and we headed out of Tarrafal, the colonial-era
cobbles eventually giving way to asphalt, into hills that seemed to have
the moon and the Dakota badlands as parents.
After we crossed the highest ridge, efforts at
farming started to appear; even during the dry season of late winter, some
patches of bright green stood out among the burned hills as we headed down to
the valley of Ribiera Brava.
Ribiera Brava had a pleasant main square adjoining
a small hotel with an excellent restaurant, an outstanding bakery and a waitress
with one of the warmest smiles that we had ever seen.
Our driver, Julio, suggested a detour on the way
back to visit the fertile village of Queimadas, complete with distillery making
grogue from fermented sugar-cane juice. Queimadas was beautifully green and
shady, growing everything from bananas through papaia to coconuts. The
distillery looked a bit basic even by the standards of the average Irish poteen
set-up and the barrel of fermenting goop was distinctly unappealing, but
the final spirit was clear, strong but clean-tasting and smooth.
A memorable day that left us filled with admiration
for the ability of the Cape Verdeans to make a life with plenty of affection,
good humour and dignity in such a fearsomely hostile
landscape.
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