Long overdue...
Rhapsode
Thu 4 Nov 2010 21:29
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Land is a busy place!
Now where was I before the grog took a hold (for
which I hold Michael firmly responsible.) on me?
Oh yes, Mindelo - a town on holiday. The sky
was grey and the town was similarly coloured - dull, grey and without
populace. Is it any wonder that a sailor was driven to drink?
But that all changed on Tuesday morning. We woke to
a gloriously sunny morning and the town donned it's brightest clothes and
set about it's business. Street vendors, fruit and veg markets, fish markets
and, happily, a laundrette.
Our first call was to clear the boat and ourselves
into the islands. Despite a good number of boats arriving over the holiday
weekend the process didn't take long. An hour or so of waiting in a good
tempered queue followed by ten minutes of actual officialdom.
Our shopping list for the morning included
some clothes pegs and a gas lighter for the cooker. The clothes pegs were easy
but the gas lighter took a little tracking down. In each one I brandished the
broken one under the shop assistant's nose and in each one I got a shake of the
index finger and a 'no' facial _expression_ until we got to Chinese shop
where, with a nod from the owner, the assistant brought out the required item.
We bought two!
Our evening entertainment was at the Club Nautic
which wasn't a club at all and its only nautical connection were through the
flags on the boat wall left by, we presumed, previous boats' crews over the
years. We ate, we drank, we relaxed and we listened to music until we were ready
for bed.
Wednesday was a very special day...
But before I go any further - a word of
warning:
Don't ever, ever go to the island
of Santo Antao - unless you are prepared to
fall in love with the place. Yes, it is that special!
Our morning ferry was the rolly little one the
'Ribeira de Paul'. An ancient tub of doubtful antecedents and prone to seasick
passengers as it negotiated the windy strait between the two
islands.
We took an Aloguer (a private little bus) to
Ribeira Grande on the other side of the island. Our fellow
passengers comprised a large French couple, a mother, baby and ancient
grand father and another young girl.
Now, to any traveller following the same route I
offer this advice. Grab the front seats if you can. This is vitally important.
Michael found himself sitting in a single seat a row back. The front seat was
taken by the ancient grand dad who was not well - he either didn't travel well
or had started the morning on grog. He brought up a spitful of phlegm, aimed out
of the window and blew. He missed and part of the missile was blown back onto
Michael.
Then he was sick but not before he had poked his
head entirely out of the window. Yes, you got it - some of the contents of the
man's stomach flew back to Michael who was not, you may imagine. too
pleased with these events. He took hold of the window, a sliding one, and
when the man did manage to get his head out of the window was ready at the first
sign of premature head withdrawal to close it on the man's neck.
I had a vision of a vomiting head locked out of the
bus and a wriggling, writhing body shut in the bus.
It didn't happen. The man had clearly emptied
himself and peace and tranquilty returned which also stopped Madame's tut
tuts who had been quietly working herself up into a tiz next to me.
Then I fell asleep. It had been an early start
after all and the coastal road wasn't particularly exciting.
My wake up call came when the driver annnounced
that he wasn't going to Riberia Grande directly after all but was taking a
detour up a side road. We agreed to the change of route but reluctantly. Our
intention had been to go for a walk up into the island's mountain range and we
were concerned that we wouldn't have time before we needed to get another
aloguer to get back in time for the afternoon ferry.
I was ready to go back to sleep again.
That would have been a very bad decision. The road
was twisty, narrow and delightful. We drove past banana trees and sugar cane.
There were breadfruit trees and papayas growing at the roadside. Woven straw
houses sat happily next to large brick houses. We saw men making the bricks with
which to build their houses. We crossed small streams and we wondered: we
wondered at the people who had to spend hours at the roadside wondering whether
an aloguer would come that day in time to take them somewhere else; we wondered
at them collecting their water from streams; we wondered at the houses with no
electricity; we wondered at the houses we could see far away with no road; most
of all we wondered at the wonderfully stunning scenery. To outsiders it was
a hidden valley. The most beautiful valley imaginable.
It was perfect place of quiet and
community.
By the time we got to Ribeira Grande we could talk
of nothing else, except perhaps of the old man who'd lost all his fingers
to leprosy, we supposed, and of the old woman who looked after him. No bus
pass here - if you got on an aloguer you paid whatever the trials of life that
had come your way.
There was no time for a walk into the
mountains. The journey had taken more than two hours and we had to be back
at the ferry port for four thirty to catch the five o'clock ferry. We wandered
up the main street looking for a place to eat and get a drink. A Coca Cola sign
down a side road beckoned. Our lucky day it seemed. We found a tour guide who
told us that he was about to leave for a six day walking tour of part of
the island, sleeping in a different place each night. The only way to see the
island as it deserved to be seen we decided. However with only a few afternoon
hours left to us he suggested that we hire an aloguer privately and get him to
drive us over the mountains back to Porto Novo. Forty euros. No haggling - after
our morning trip along the valley floor we simply said 'yes
please'.
Each minute of that trip was worth forty euros. As
we wound and climbed our way up the mountain road we saw the island at its
finest. How to describe it? Would you understand the landscapes if I said that
it was like the wrapping paper of a giant's birthday party presents? Huge mounds
of crumpled paper - evey shade of green with rusty browns, blues and reds -
thrown on to the surface of the sea. Great ravines, long dragonlike ridges,
pinnacles and peaks rising improbably steeply, picturesque valleys and yet
always a stillness.
Higher and higher. We left the fields of
maize, the bananas, the sugar cane below us. We now had the fresh smell of pine
trees.
And higher still - higher than the clouds which the
island seemed to wear as a pretty girl with her head held high wears a necklace.
White, fluffly clouds. So easy to imagine an angel on each one sending light
silvery notes from her harp back to the islands secret places. By the time the
notes reached our ears they had become gentle birdsong.
We picked up a young school girl walking the road
home from school. She got off several miles later with still a walk up a small
track to her house. Who is the more fortunate - a child at home who gets the
school bus or goes with the duty mum in the car or this girl who walks several
uncomplaining miles each school day along a mountain track and a deserted road
downhill to school and up and up and up hill on her way home at the end of the
school day?
There is a dormant volcano at the top of the
mountain road where we looked down on toy houses in a field of maize. Clouds
were pouring down the other side and it brought 'The Lost World' to mind. We
surely wouldn't have been surprised to have seen dinosaurs!
And then the road down to the coastal plain - a
ride down a dragons back into Porto Novo for our ferry.
Had it all been real? Had I fallen asleep on the
bus again and dreamt it? Dragons? Angels?
I fell in love - the island now has a part of me
forever.
But not the ferry. The daily afternoon ferry
apparently didn't run on Wednesdays. Everyone knew this of course, except
us.
Stranded but who cares? There was a little hotel
which had two little rooms and which provided us with dinner, wine and
breakfast, a good sleep (apart from the occasional mosquito) and a shower. What
more could three stranded sailors want?
No, don't answer that.
Happy sailing
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