Xaguate Hotel Fogo

... and fabulous breaking waves would make this a windsurfers/boarders paradise. Having watched the Carnival Tan Tan band we saw the Mindelo Carnival Kings & Queens in their colourful costumes and the local fishermen with their boats before winding our way back to the ship. From a distant the roads look like any normal tarmac surface but in fact the roads are all ...

... 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.

... spicey chilli sauce for the fish, in fact he gave us a whole bottle to take home. Yummy. On another trip with Antonio we drove over a sand dune and got his pick-up truck well and truly sunk in the sand. It took us about 30 mins to dig under the wheels and make a road of rocks and pebbles. All Antonio could say was 'two weeks ago there was no sand here....' Tomorrow I think we will be kitesurfing some more...

... he flew his kite into mine and my lines snapped, luckily I have a spare pair, but he was a bit naughty and claimed it wasn¡¦t his fault (after admitting he wasn¡¦t insured). So he flew off back home without so much as giving me a euro¡K f¼ We did have a couple of days with no wind so we took a bus to the next village called Espagoes. There is not much there except a couple of music shops, and a hill with the islands satellite dish on ...

... 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 ...

... well. I was lucky and did not have anyone in front of me to recline the seat. Otherwise it gets really cramped. I have no idea how some of our fellow passengers could have sat through that flight given the size limitations. As far as how full it was from Cape Town to Atlanta I counted about 5-10 empty seats out of about 100 in the back third of the plane. Some people just ...

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 ...