Residencial Praia Maria

Saturday 17/01/09 St Vincent - Cape Verde Islands A truly volcanic island chain, the barren rugged mountains dominate the landscape and the surrounding islands to the extent that it resembles a lunar landscape. After a brief visit to the city of Mindelo we travelled on to Catfish Bay to take in the majestic sights of the bay and the rugged mountain backdrop, the strong ...

... Then you can get you visa. If your name for some reason is not on the list (which it isn't, in most cases...) then you'd have to pay for it 25 euro to get in. The whole procedure takes around an hour or more. You have to be patient. The travel agency secured a bus-transfer for us - luckily. The hotel was a no-5-star pousada, but enough for us, since we did not intend to spend a lot of time there.

... us spear fishing at Ponta Preta. Luckily for me he only had 3 spear guns, one for James, El Loco, and himself. I was camera person, fish-pointer-outer and spent a lot of time patrolling to ensure the pretty fish weren't being caught....he he. It was a day with hardly any swell which made it a good day for fishing with excellent visibility underwater. James' technique involved diving down level to the fish ...

... man took pity on us and gave us 5 new hooks. I then found a heavy shell to use as a weight and we started getting lots of bites¡K he saw we were still not catching anything thing so gave us a souvenir from Cape Verde, which was a serious looking weight and hook set up. And within minutes I caught our first fish, see photo¡K. YEAH! It is sitting ready to be cooked for our dinner as I type¡K.must leave you on that note to go and cook. XXX

... a kite! (hurray we were on the right track). This made us pick up the pace in the heat and within no time we had arrived at shark beach where we were greeted with 15 knots of wind and more kites than we could count. The folloing day we got a lift in a pick up truck and went out kitesurfing. The following few day the wind had dropped to 10 knots, not enougth for kitesurfing so we spent many hours dangling our legs off the rickedly old pier trying to catch ...

... out with an empty seat next to them. The one nice thing about these modern planes is you have your own personal LCD monitor in front of you. You can pick from about 15 relatively current movies and start and stop anytime you want. There are also some simple games to play. There was even a live camera shot called "taxi cam" which you could view anytime from take off to landing.

We were given two options - stay on the plane or go to the terminal - during refueling. I chose the terminal because that meant getting up and walking. Of course, I didn't think that there would be nothing other than a large room there. So it was standing around for 1-1/2 hours while they refueled the plane.

Well it's -38 deg C when I boarded the first plane. the 727's heater froze over night, they pass around blankets and off we go. eventually by Minniapolis the plane defrosts. New York was around freezing and I had a couple hours to wait so it was walk around JFK. The South African Air 747 took off in the evening. A fuel stop in Cape Verde allowed us a streach and a visit with the three legged dog. Landed in Jo'bergurg and took the bus into ...