Santo Antão, Cape Verde
The Cape Verde islands form a loose chevron, like homing boobies flying east to Africa. From the most remote southwesterly pair, Fogo and Brava, we have moved north to the most westerly, Santo Antão. From the sea it seemed some giant lorry had tipped piles of orange, gray and white sand all over the place. Barren, sere, a volcanic wasteland. But its secrets lie deep inland, so from our Zodiac landing at a sunbaked harbour (where a beach of conchshells tinkled like cowbells) we took off in a convoy of minibuses to venture into the interior. First a desert of scattered thornbushes, with brown-necked ravens and an Egyptian vulture. Then climbing, climbing up narrow cobbled roads above deep gulches, up into a parched, manmade forest of pines and cypress, and then suddenly on a tight bend at 5,000 feet what looked like the edge of the world: we were peering vertically down into snaking valleys thousands of feet below us, wrinkled with stone terraces, where sugar cane, bananas, maize, manioc and beans grow. Alexandrine swifts rocketed over our heads between the pines and wattles. This Lost World of ravines and riverbeds seems more like Macchu Picchu than a set of African islands. 15 intrepid souls set off from a crater rim and trekked down 3500 feet along a switchback track, taking them down almost to sea level. We timorous beasties climbed back into the vans only to be terrified anew by the road cut by hand into a vertical cliff face which then zigzagged along a knife-edge rock crest. Above us soared two Neglected Kestrels, the endemic falcon. Thank heavens they are neglected by locals and busdrivers alike, for one mistake from the man at the wheel, and we would have been flying like ravens and feeding vultures ourselves. Down, down, down to Ribeira Grande on the north coast, then along the blackcliff coast road to a local distillery. Here an ancient apparatus (like something out of the Spanish Inquisition) crushes sugarcane to make a local rocketfuel called grogue. With added honey it becomes poncho: it certainly has all the subtelty of a closed fist, but the names echo the maritime history of many of the islanders from whaling days: grog and punch were the traditional mariners' liquor.
Lunch at a green oasis in a parched valley, serenaded by Cape Verdean musicians as we languished under bougainvilleas, and ate cachupa, a local stew of maize, beans, fish and cassava. Just as we were getting the hang of Verdean living, too soon it was time to reboard our chariots and return, pausing only for a last moment of wonder as we gazed through the golden Grevillea blossoms to the terraces below. Somehow, after generations of dogged toil, the slaves of centuries past have turned this brutal terrain into their own unique Shangri-la, an unforgettable landscape as magical as the lost city of Atlantis.
The Cape Verde islands form a loose chevron, like homing boobies flying east to Africa. From the most remote southwesterly pair, Fogo and Brava, we have moved north to the most westerly, Santo Antão. From the sea it seemed some giant lorry had tipped piles of orange, gray and white sand all over the place. Barren, sere, a volcanic wasteland. But its secrets lie deep inland, so from our Zodiac landing at a sunbaked harbour (where a beach of conchshells tinkled like cowbells) we took off in a convoy of minibuses to venture into the interior. First a desert of scattered thornbushes, with brown-necked ravens and an Egyptian vulture. Then climbing, climbing up narrow cobbled roads above deep gulches, up into a parched, manmade forest of pines and cypress, and then suddenly on a tight bend at 5,000 feet what looked like the edge of the world: we were peering vertically down into snaking valleys thousands of feet below us, wrinkled with stone terraces, where sugar cane, bananas, maize, manioc and beans grow. Alexandrine swifts rocketed over our heads between the pines and wattles. This Lost World of ravines and riverbeds seems more like Macchu Picchu than a set of African islands. 15 intrepid souls set off from a crater rim and trekked down 3500 feet along a switchback track, taking them down almost to sea level. We timorous beasties climbed back into the vans only to be terrified anew by the road cut by hand into a vertical cliff face which then zigzagged along a knife-edge rock crest. Above us soared two Neglected Kestrels, the endemic falcon. Thank heavens they are neglected by locals and busdrivers alike, for one mistake from the man at the wheel, and we would have been flying like ravens and feeding vultures ourselves. Down, down, down to Ribeira Grande on the north coast, then along the blackcliff coast road to a local distillery. Here an ancient apparatus (like something out of the Spanish Inquisition) crushes sugarcane to make a local rocketfuel called grogue. With added honey it becomes poncho: it certainly has all the subtelty of a closed fist, but the names echo the maritime history of many of the islanders from whaling days: grog and punch were the traditional mariners' liquor.
Lunch at a green oasis in a parched valley, serenaded by Cape Verdean musicians as we languished under bougainvilleas, and ate cachupa, a local stew of maize, beans, fish and cassava. Just as we were getting the hang of Verdean living, too soon it was time to reboard our chariots and return, pausing only for a last moment of wonder as we gazed through the golden Grevillea blossoms to the terraces below. Somehow, after generations of dogged toil, the slaves of centuries past have turned this brutal terrain into their own unique Shangri-la, an unforgettable landscape as magical as the lost city of Atlantis.
