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Wednesday, 24th January 2007

Cape Verde: A perfect spot for lounging

Paul R Taylor

SAL: Rich culture

AS the plane descends from cruising altitude and prepares to land on Sal, it occurs to me the island would be the perfect backdrop should NASA choose to fake a manned mission to Mars.

Seen from above it's a barren red rock, scorched by the sun, and first impressions are that there will be little to do here but relax, read a few books, eat my body weight in seafood and bake.

Sal is one of 10 volcanic islands that comprise the Cape Verde archipelago, scattered off the west coast of Africa about 400 miles from Senegal and on the same latitude as Barbados. The chain was uninhabited when discovered by the Portuguese in the 1450s and became a major centre of the slave trade due to its strategic position in the Atlantic Ocean.

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Since then the islands have been used as a stop-off by everyone from pirates to trans-Atlantic flights, and have welcomed peoples from across Africa, Europe and South America. Its visitors have left a recognisable imprint on Cape Verde's rich and unique culture and music, particularly the Brazilians, Portuguese and Senegalese.

Just five-and-a-half hours direct from Manchester, the islands are being touted as the next winter sun destination and are currently something of a property hotspot with speculators.

There are only about 22 days rain a year here, with an average temperature of 28C in November, and as I step off the plane at Sal's international airport I can already feel the heat chasing the Manchester winter out of my bones.

Enthusiastic

We're met at the airport by enthusiastic dancers and a salsa/samba band, given shots of almost medicinal rum, and then ferried to the Hotel Riu Funana-Garopa, which is to the north of the island next to one of its main towns, Santa Maria.

The hotel is split in two, Hotel Riu Funana and Hotel Riu Garopa, with 500 rooms in 10 blocks arranged in a loosely horseshoe shape around two pools and the beach.

Riu is an international chain, with hotels everywhere from Bulgaria to Cuba, and the African architecture of both its hotels here on Sal are complemented by mature palm trees and lots of wood carvings in the reception area. The room has everything you'd expect from a five-star hotel, with TV, shower etc.

I've never been all-inclusive before and have to admit, like the majority of people from our plane, I spent the first few days basking by the pool, swimming in the warm ocean, scoffing and attempting to drown myself in cocktails (which unfortunately were nothing special).

On the third day, it's time to explore the island with an excursion to the Pedra de Lume salt mines on the back of a Toyota 4x4.

The trip back across the arid island is largely uninspiring, there's not too much to see but rock and sand, but the salt mines are a real treat. Below sea level, hewn from the rock by a volcanic explosion, the pools here contain water that is 26 times saltier than sea water.

Take a dip and, like the hypersaline Dead Sea in Jordan, you float. It's a weird sensation, unexpectedly weird. You can't really prepare yourself mentally for the feeling of not sinking, but instead watching your toes pop up and lying suspended like in a giant, warm, watery hammock.

It's a highlight and well worth the 32 Euro price of the excursion alone, which is lucky because the rest of the day is a bit disappointing. We're taken, bumping across the desert-like flats, to a natural swimming pool on the coast, where there's also Sal's Blue Eye - a hole in the cliff where the sun shines on to the water in the shape of an eye.

Fertile

Here, and in the administrative town of Espargos where we stop for a coffee grown on the fertile volcanic slopes of the nearby island of Fogo, there are lots of Senegalese trying to sell African goods.

The hassle is something you can tell annoys the native Cape Verdeans, who pride themselves on their geniality.

This is one of the problems with Sal; tourism and all its negatives seem to have been grafted on to an island with little in the way of infrastructure or any other industry. There's plenty of corrugated iron shanty towns, several power cuts at the hotel and some of the people I speak to who had come out with the intention of buying property are reconsidering.

Still, it's a great sun trap and the Cape Verdean culture is present in its people rather than its buildings and public spaces.

Sal is also one the world's best windsurfing and kite surfing destinations, with a constant strong breeze blowing in from the Sahara, although the lessons at the hotel are prohibitively expensive (about £250 for a week) unless this is something you'd planned before hand. There are plenty of other activities, such as horse trekking and diving, if you want to do more than get a tan.

And Sal is just one of the islands. The archipelago features two distinctly different types of island. The more westerly and closer to Africa, Sal, Boa Vista and Maio, are distinguished by their long sandy beaches, whereas the capital Santiago is lusher. It is the most African, and also the largest and most densely populated.

Sao Vincente is more European and said to be one of the most beautiful - the island of colonial architecture, poets and musicians. It even boasts a golf course. You could spend weeks or even months exploring each island, each offers a different experience.

But with only a week to spare, Sal's a great place to escape from the British winter for some honest lounging. One thing to note though, the flight from Manchester may be under six hours but the return refuels in The Gambia, extending the flight time to nine-and-a-half hours, which is something of a long haul.

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