Days 1 & 2: Home to Cape Verde

At some point earlier this year we decided it would be nice to get away somewhere warm during the winter. Our trip to the USA in September was amazing, but the number of miles we travelled and different hotels we stayed in meant it didn't necessarily meet the definition of relaxing. We were also conscious that we both had projects we were supposed to be making progress on by the end of the year. I am supposed to be translating a book which I might, erm, be slightly behind on. The idea of going away somewhere sunny and focussing on trying to get things done seemed like an attractive one. Tim volunteered to be in charge of booking something and somehow found cheap flights to the slightly surprising destination of... Cape Verde!

Cape Verde is a place which I don't think either of us knew very much about - or had ever considered going to - before this trip. But with an average temperature of around 28 degrees in November, it definitely meets the definition of winter sun. The country consists of ten volcanic islands, several of which look like they are really beautiful and worth visiting. Our flight was to the island of Sal, which does not quite fall into that category. It's quite small and flat and was barely inhabited until the late eighteenth century when the Portuguese, who had colonised the islands, started a salt industry here. The island apparently has an average of 350 sunny days per year(!) which means that these days, tourism is a more lucrative industry than salt. My research revealed that Sal is a good example of a so-called "fly and flop" destination; a place you fly to in order to literally do nothing. While we won't quite be doing nothing over the course of the next week, the fact that there are no major tourist attractions on the island does mean that it will be harder for me to find excuses not to make progress with my book translation!

Our journey to Cape Verde started on Thursday evening, with a long drive down to Gatwick. We stayed overnight at a hotel near the airport before our flight on Friday morning. Midweek in November seems to be a very good time to fly from Gatwick; the airport was pretty empty and we whizzed through check-in and security in no time. Our flying experience wasn't going to be quite as glamorous as our recent business class experience flying to the USA, as flying to Sal was going to involve six hours in EasyJet.

I can confirm that six hours feels like a very long time to spend on an EasyJet flight. The main positive was that the plane wasn't actually bright orange inside, but instead had quite tasteful black seats. Unfortunately, we ended up with very noisy, annoying people behind us, so I spent most of the six hours having to wear ear plugs. After three hours I felt like we must be nearly there... but looked at my map to find we were just flying past Madeira, which was around halfway. After four hours, we flew past the Canary Islands. After that, there was nothing for another two hours until we finally touched down on Sal.

We'd had to apply for an entry permit in advance, which essentially required us to pay a tourist tax of about 30 Euros. With that already sorted, we were able to breeze through passport control in minutes, using e-gates and not even requiring a passport stamp. The process of retrieving our baggage took significantly longer, with cases being offloaded from the plane in stages and our suitcase ending up in the final batch. A little excitement was added to proceedings by an impromptu power cut in the airport, which caused the baggage carousel to grind to a halt and all the lights to turn off. Welcome to Cape Verde!

Hoping we hadn't made a terrible mistake with this choice of destination, we finally emerged into the main airport where someone was supposed to be meeting us to drive us to the apartment Tim had booked. It looked like a really nice place - and it had good reviews on booking.com, so seemed legitimate - but I was slightly nervous about it because there had been some odd communications with the owner about it being part of a hotel and what we needed to say to them when we checked in. But in the end, it all turned out to be fine. The promised driver was waiting for us with a sign and we were soon in a vehicle, driving towards the hotel complex. It took less than 20 minutes to get from the airport, which is more or less in the centre of the island, to the hotel (which is towards the bottom). It really isn't a very big place!

Checking in at the hotel was an experience. It's a large hotel which is used by several tour operators and we arrived behind a coachload of TUI passengers, who were queuing chaotically in reception. The only good news was that our driver had beaten the coachload of EasyJet Holidays passengers from our plane, so we were ahead of them at least. The queues moved exceptionally slowly and it took about half an hour before we got to the desk. We were given wristbands, which I think just show we're entitled to be on the premises, and then finally we were shown to our apartment.

Luckily, it turned out to be really nice. We've got a big living area, complete with table, where we'll both be able to work during the week.

There's also a kitchen, two bathrooms and two bedrooms. 

And we have a small balcony, with a view out across one of the hotel pools.

We didn't really have time to enjoy the view last night. Despite the fact that our plane had landed around 15.50, between waiting for our bags and queuing to check in it was 17.50 before we reached the apartment. We were conscious that it was going to start getting dark soon - and that we needed to pick up supplies of food and drinking water - so we set off straightaway to find the nearest supermarket. While there wasn't one within our vast hotel complex, we found one about a kilometre away within a different complex. We made it back to the apartment with some essentials like water and pasta before it got completely dark.

Friday had been a long day of travelling so we had an early night and decided to treat Saturday as a proper day of holiday so we could explore a bit of the island. It felt strange to be going from the freezing temperatures in the UK to shorts and sun-cream this morning, but it really is incredibly hot and humid outside.

Our plan was to walk to the nearby town of Santa Maria, which is a few kilometres away from the hotel. The grounds of the hotel complex itself are very green and obviously carefully watered.

Once we got outside of the hotel and began walking along a small road towards Santa Maria, we could see that the rest of the island is really quite arid.

We could just make out the sea in the distance...

...but everywhere else looked incredibly dry and dusty.

Within 40 minutes or so we had reached the outskirts of Santa Maria. It seemed like a bright, colourful town.

We realised, slightly to our surprise, that the town boasts its own English pub.

The main streets of the town were pretty, with lots of palm trees and bright buildings.

We found the main square, which was home to a big Santa Maria sign and a post office.

From there it wasn't very far down to the beach.

The sea was a gorgeous shade of blue.

Despite the fact that it was a very hot day, there was actually quite a breeze and so there were some pretty big waves at times.

We were quite hungry by this point, so made our way back into the centre of town to find somewhere for an early lunch. We found a nice bar where we could sit outside and where the servings of wine were generous!

We went with the lunchtime menu of the day, which seemed good value. I had a starter of chicken goujons...

...followed by a main course of surprisingly spicy meatballs with rice...

...finished off with coffee and cake  

It was a nice meal and amazing to be sitting outside in the sun after all the cold weather at home. Once we'd finished eating, we tracked down a slightly bigger supermarket than the one we'd been to last night and stocked up on some more provisions. 

We walked back to the hotel on a slightly different route, alongside the main road.

On the opposite side of the road we could see some of the salt that the island is named after.

Then it was back to the apartment to battle the incredibly slow WiFi and attempt to upload today's pictures!