Ilha De Sao Nicolau
Scot Free III
Frank & Anne
Fri 21 Oct 2016 23:01
We are anchored off the main port, Tarrafal, a busy fishing harbour with many contrasts. Few tourists venture here except for the usual, intrepid, German walkers and a few yachts, again either German or French and quiet until the fishing boats come in, to tie up against the fish market. Then the whole village seems to turn out. Huge tuna are offloaded and everyone including quite frail, elderly, men, women and a few children are seen carrying these huge fish, by the tail, back home for dinner.
The few shops and un-supermarkets are often just tiny rooms with a door open onto the street, sporting a bewildering combination of goods. Bicycle spares sit alongside bags of rice and x'th-hand mobile phones. It takes a bit of searching but we have found everything we need: Courtesy flags, hand stitched, to order; a very "official" looking stamp to make our self-printed documentation look even more "official". (You must lodge the ships papers at each port until departure, and the filing systems are shambolic. So, we copy ours and stamp the copies with our "official ships stamp" and they have yet to be refused); Liptons tea and yams.
Filling our water tanks has been interesting. The water at the fishing harbour is not of drinking quality, so we buy it in 5 litre containers, from the un-supermarket. The harbour is crowded with boat-boys vying to take your lines, look after the dinghy, watch the boat and fetch water (in a wheelbarrow). It all seems to work and we even went off, all day, to visit the Capitol (moved inland to the floor of an extinct volcano's caldera, as a protection against pirates) and the boat was still there when we got back.
