Beach bums in Boa

An early start as usual with a walk to the beach after breakfast at 7.30. We decided to have a long walk today but we hadn’t managed to get water so we stopped at a hotel along the front and eventually managed to get some. It was an all inclusive hotel called Bravo so we ended up having to pay for it at reception, walk around with Visitor badges and take the slip given to the bar in exchange for two bottles of water. I kept the badge as a reminder of the complicated lives they seem to set themselves over here.

The only lovely thing about Sal is the beaches so I have taken a few here from our 2 and a half hour walk. There is so much beach it’s like the Sahara by the sea and seems to go on forever. Look at the beautiful artificial colour contrasts between the sea, sand and sky. We walked all the way around to the Riu Hotel that refused us entry a couple of days ago but this time managed to slip into the back entrance to get some photographs to show you. It’s a huge place where you can easily get lost. There was security on every gate but with so many people going in and out we managed to walk past them with our hands behind our backs so they couldn’t see that we weren’t wearing wrist bands. We looked for a couple of wrist bands without success so we could sample the fair. For our journey back we decided to walk across the desert rather than all the way around the beach but we soon encountered swamps that we had to circumnavigate. Claire didn’t like the looks of the very large holes dug in the sand. It was a very hard long walk as most of it was done on soft sand and by the time we had got back we had a quick shower, I did the last two entries and we headed off to our new favorite restaurant the Casa Canaria where Claire had exactly the same as yesterday but with a mixed salad starter. I tried the bean soup followed by half a chicken.

Just time to have a quick hour in the sun, shower and off to the airport to catch our flight to Boa Vista. Again it wasn’t simple when we discovered that Claires ticket was different to mine. She had an outward journey for the previous day whilst mine was for the correct day. This must have happened when we got them to change the name on Claires ticket the day before. We had checked the name but not the other details as we had already checked them before. Even though they took a copy of Claires passport they even had her name wrong for a second time but we thought it close enough to get through. We had to wait until everyone had checked in before returning to travel standby. This worked so it didn’t matter in the end. We had only taken hand luggage each but was concerned that we wouldn’t get through with all our bathroom stuff. There were signs saying the usual that only 100 ml of liquid or semi-solids to be put in a clear plastic bag. We asked the lady at check in but she said it was no problem. We needn’t have been concerned as nobody checked anything and it was even possible to go between the departure lounge and the outside world freely. People were taking very large water bottles onto the plane and even massive suitcases. We finally ended up leaving about an hour after we should have arrived the other end. It’s not quite as bad as it seems as the flight was only 14 minutes long. So we had arrived an hour before the flight, had an hours wait all for a 14 minute flight. We all had to pile onto a bus that drove about 20 yards parking outside the aircraft. We noticed a German air force airplane with the republic of Germany flag outside so they may have been having special guests for Germany in Sal.

We also talked to a nice chap called Nick Turner who works for Cape Verde Life that was very helpful and knowledgeable about the islands. He offered us a guide book but we had hand luggage and the books were in his checked in luggage so we decided not to keep our driver waiting any longer. I took a picture of the beach from the plane and they look even better than those on Sal. We arrived at our hotel which is very basic but will tell you more about this tomorrow. From first impressions I doubt if there is an internet café anywhere so they will probably go on at the same time anyway.