Cape Verde Hopes to Be the "next Caribbean"

Our son told us to internalize the Peace Corps mantra as the start of our journey to the Republic of Cape Verde neared.

"Patience and flexibility," he said.

"Be excited, but don't think this will be an entirely normal vacation," he said. He also said the people are beautiful. He was right on both counts.

We first heard of Cape Verde when he learned he was being sent there to teach English for two years. Now, 18 months after he left Iowa, we were going to visit him for Christmas in Ribeira Brava, a village on the island of São Nicolau. Our 21-year-old daughter was going along, making for three relative newbies in international travel heading for an archipelago of 10 islands 300 miles due west of Dakar, Senegal.

Cape Verde aspires to be "the next Caribbean." Maybe.

We left Iowa in mid-December, narrowly escaping a snow storm that might have wrecked our trip, and connected through Minneapolis to Boston. There, we caught the weekly flight on TACV, Cape Verde's national airline, to Praia, the nation's capital city on the southern island of Santiago.

We emerged from the airport in Praia to bright, late morning sunshine and temperatures in the 70s. Our son met us at the airport and we piled into a taxi for the 15-minute ride to our hotel, the Pestana Tropico. Our plan was to stay there for several days before taking a ferry north to São Nicolau, a few more days of sight-seeing, then ferrying back to catch the weekly flight back to Boston. (More-frequent flights are available connecting through London or Amsterdam but they're more expensive and would have meant overnight stays in Europe.)

Cape Verde's official language is Portuguese, although most daily communication is in Cape Verdean Creole, or Kriolu, in which our son was by now fluent. For the most part, Brady served as our tour guide and translator, although we did strike out on our own at times.

The Pestana Tropico, with comfortable rooms and relaxing seawater pool looking out over the Atlantic, is five minutes from the bustling center of Praia, a city of 105,000 (roughly one-quarter of the nation's total). Santiago was once a stopping-off point in the slave trade and is more African in culture than the northern islands. Young people with cell phones are a common sight in downtown Praia and around the Sukupira - a busy warren of tin-roofed stalls - as are brand names such as Nike, Reebok and Abercrombie & Fitch. Rock music, Cape Verdean morna and funana and even Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" came from transistor radios or boom boxes as we moved from stall to stall looking for uniquely local souvenirs on a warm, sunny afternoon.

The central market is also something of a transportation hub. The ubiquitous Toyota sedan taxis queue up waiting for local fares, and nine-passenger Hiace (pronounced Yahss) vans circle the market until they collect sufficient travelers headed for São Domingos, Assomada and other towns and villages in the mountainous interior. For lunch one day, we traveled to Assomada by overloaded Hiace (18, including the driver), about an hour's drive on a new national highway and hilly, winding roads. Brady walked us straight to a small, open-sided concrete block structure, where we sat on benches at a table that occupied half the single room. He ordered for us in Kriolu and soon we had bowls of beans and rice with a couple of large hunks of grilled pork on top, still attached to the bone. Two young local men sat with us as we ate quietly, and a 2-year-old eyed us curiously and finished his own lunch.

After lunch we found a small hotel bar for drinks - beer, Coke, bottled water - then explored the Assomada market for a bit before catching another Hiace for the ride back to Praia.

The next day we rented a Skoda Octavia - a 5-speed, diesel sedan - for a trip from Praia to Cidade Velha on Santiago's southwestern coast, then back through Assomada and north to the town of Tarrafal. (We mistakenly thought a car rental could be arranged quickly but ended up being patient and flexible half the morning before starting out.)

Cidade Velha is the site of the Fortaleza Real de San Felipe, a 16th Century cliff-top Spanish fort that overlooks the town. Guided tours are available. Other sites of historical significance include the remains of the Cathedral of Cape Verde, which was completed in about 1700 and nearly destroyed 12 years later, and the Church and Convent of São Francisco, which suffered the same fate. A short stroll away, visitors can see the remains of a grogue factory, where sugar cane was pressed by a stone wheel as the first step in distilling the local rum. The Church of Our Lady of Rosario, which was built as a gothic chapel in 1495 and later expanded, still stands.

Perched on the edge of the ocean was an outdoor bar/restaurant offering comfortable wicker chairs and cold water. Entertainment was provided by colorful roosters pecking at our feet and a lone monkey dancing in a nearby tree.

Backtracking to the modern highway from Cidade Velha on a winding cobblestone road, we stopped to grab some quick photos of a passarinha atop a sign indicating the way to the fort. It is recognizable by the distinctive long beak and white, black, rust and electric-blue coloring. The bird is featured on Cape Verde's 10-escudo coin.

The drive from Praia to Tarrafal - about 50 kilometers, essentially the entire length of Santiago - takes about two hours. We stopped in the mountains at an overlook, from which we could see tiny villages in the valleys on either side of the road. These are volcanic islands, where modest block homes cling to hillsides and corn and sugarcane are planted on narrow terraces that often appear all but inaccessible except to the goats.

In the scenic cove at Tarrafal, visitors can lie in the sun on a white sand beach and watch the fishing boats bob in the surf a hundred yards or so off shore. The Baia Verde café offers a break from the sun while diners enjoy the cool ocean breezes, cold Super Bock beer and sandwiches. Climbing back in the car, we were persuaded to give a few local boys some treats before they went on their way.

Later in the week, our journey aboard the Ferry Tarrafal (which took us from Praia to Tarrafal on São Nicolau) proved to be the real test of patience as well as intestinal fortitude. We disembarked at 8 p.m. in seas that were expected to be a bit rough for "inexperienced travelers." The seasickness set in - mostly among the non-Iowans - soon after the ferry emerged from the shelter that Santiago provides from the easterly winds. It was a long, mostly sleepless night until we neared São Nicolau and the shelter of the bay at Tarrafal.

At the landing, we met the driver Brady had hired and climbed into his pickup truck, with Sue in the passenger seat and the rest of us on wooden bench seats in the back with the luggage. We set off up a winding, washboard gravel road through mostly treeless, desert-like, rock-strewn landscape. Over a pass several kilometers from the coast, the interior was increasingly green if not exactly lush. About half-way through the hour's drive to Vila da Ribeira Brava the gravel gave way to cobblestones and we reached the northern coast. The scenery once again is rocky shoreline and steep cliffs overlooking the sea.

Ribeira Brava is home to about 2,500. In marked contrast to Praia and Santiago, the architecture and atmosphere are more Portuguese and Mediterranean than African. As in the rest of the nation, fresh water is always in short supply and indoor plumbing is scarce outside the larger towns. Women visit the water stations, which are replenished by tanker trucks, and carry water home in containers on their heads, in push carts or on the backs of donkeys.

Although these islands are considered "developing," it's not unusual to find families with cell phones and teen-agers listening to iPods. Jobs are few and many Cape Verdeans have sought work in the U.S., Italy, Brazil and Portugal to provide for their families. Along with money, they also send the latest clothes, shoes and electronics to relatives at home.

Soccer is popular throughout Cape Verde, but the highlight of the social year is Carnaval in Ribeira Brava. Carnaval pits one group of townspeople against another to see who can come up with the wildest costumes and best theme song, parade noisily through the streets, and party through the night. Even the local Peace Corps volunteers have been known to join in the revelry.

We stayed at the Pensão Jardim, a few minutes' walk from the town square and the oldest church in the islands. With colorful tile décor and lush greenery (jardim means garden), the hillside hotel features a commanding view of the town and valley from its second-floor patio. Breakfast and dinner are served al fresco in a rooftop dining area. Other guests during our stay included two couples from Holland as well as another Dutch family. All were there for the hiking, for which Cape Verde is becoming increasingly well known.

Christmas is observed as a holy day in this mostly Catholic country, but very quietly by U.S. standards. We were invited to Christmas dinner with a family in Ribeira Brava, who cooked a stew of fresh-killed young goat, potatoes and onions in honor of the occasion. It's a day of visiting and eating with friends, and most of the family had eaten before we arrived.

Before we had even landed on São Nicolau, we'd agreed to be flexible again and not take the 12-hour ferry ride back to Praia. Instead, we booked seats on a plane from Ribeira Brava (the airport is a 10-minute drive from the hotel) to the island of Sal for a 6-hour layover, then to Praia.

Our final trial of patience came at the airport in Praia on what we thought would be the day of our flight to Boston and home. Our 6 p.m. Friday flight didn't leave until 4 a.m. Saturday. The tedium of waiting around at the airport was relieved a bit by a bus ride to a mid-town Praia hotel, where we relaxed in a suite and had dinner courtesy of the national airline.

Of course, we missed our connection in Boston, but remained flexible if pretty much out of patience by the time we arrived home to several inches of snow.