Sal is the perfect holiday Island 16 degrees north of the equator and sunny every day of the year. It's one of the Cape Verde (Cabo Verde) Islands. They are independent and most inhabitants of Sal (30,000) are Catholic so they love children and families. The Island mantra is "Cabo Verde No Stress" so you can understand why we think of it as our African Caribbean. The laid back locals all seemed to speak English (as English and French are taught in school (native language is Portuguese) are very happy to make tourists welcome.
I like the fact its different - the townswomen go shopping and carry home baskets of vegetables or fish on their heads! Some local homes do not have running water and the children of the family collect the water every day from the water building in big plastic containers and wheel barrow it home. The roads don't have names and as they have more children than places in the High School they have two shifts a day - so you are either on the early or late school day - how enlightened and what a much better use of resources than UK
If you are into fishing you can go out into the Atlantic for the day reel in a monster or you can surf the massive waves during the winter season. We are old and like a quiet time so we just watched the guys practice gymnastics at the beach Gym while having a cold beer less than €4 for 2 drinks. Yes everything for tourists is priced in Euros as the Cape Verde Escudos is fixed to the Euro at 1.1
A day out round the Island with the friendly guys at Dreamtours was 55 Euro for two of us. It was fun racketing along in the back of a truck with a hot wind blowing our heads off and we got to see Lemon Sharks feeding, a mirage that has to be seen to understand why folks die in the desert heading for the 'water' and we floated in the salt mine -its inside an extinct volcano.
So the upshot of our trip to Sal is that we are very happy to have a holiday home there that will be ready to use for winter 14/15
I like the fact its different - the townswomen go shopping and carry home baskets of vegetables or fish on their heads! Some local homes do not have running water and the children of the family collect the water every day from the water building in big plastic containers and wheel barrow it home. The roads don't have names and as they have more children than places in the High School they have two shifts a day - so you are either on the early or late school day - how enlightened and what a much better use of resources than UK
If you are into fishing you can go out into the Atlantic for the day reel in a monster or you can surf the massive waves during the winter season. We are old and like a quiet time so we just watched the guys practice gymnastics at the beach Gym while having a cold beer less than €4 for 2 drinks. Yes everything for tourists is priced in Euros as the Cape Verde Escudos is fixed to the Euro at 1.1
A day out round the Island with the friendly guys at Dreamtours was 55 Euro for two of us. It was fun racketing along in the back of a truck with a hot wind blowing our heads off and we got to see Lemon Sharks feeding, a mirage that has to be seen to understand why folks die in the desert heading for the 'water' and we floated in the salt mine -its inside an extinct volcano.
So the upshot of our trip to Sal is that we are very happy to have a holiday home there that will be ready to use for winter 14/15
