By the way, where is Cabo Verde ??

August 21st - Septembre 7th 2002

Boavista lies just over 21 miles south of Sal. It is one of the least developed islands of Cape Verde. With its giant sand dunes and thousands of date palms it has aptly been described as a "small piece of the Sahara adrift in the Atlantic Ocean". During the short navigation from Mordeira, we passed a few huge turtles laboriously swimming towards Sal. They look so clumsy when they swim at the surface! Swimming under water seems a lot more natural to them. We also caught a large dorade which broke the line just before we hoisted it up aboard. We just had time to see how big it was. What a disappointment ! We still haven't tried this fish which is said to be very tasty. I guess diner will be pasta with butter...
Our first impression of Sal Rey wasn't very good. Maybe it was because of our bad mood following the lost of the dorade. We quikly changed our minds when taking a walk in town.Sal rey is quiet, colourful, with many trees along the streets. The supply in food is irregular in this island inhabited by only 4000 people. Some prices are prohibitive, such as mangoes and other fruits. People are as welcoming and warm as those of Sal. The only thing is that everyone thoughts we were Italian tourists ! We can't blame them, most of the foreigners are Italian...
Boavista's fishermen are part of the few to still use latin sails on their wooden boats. They do have an outboard engine which they use to go against the wind, but when they return, they do it by sail, and it's very pretty to look at. It's such a shame not to take advantage of the wind which almost always blows in these islands.

The beaches along the very large bay are clean and almost deserted. We walked along them for an hour and a half without seeing anyone. A wreck lies in the south of the bay at only 6 meters of water. Parts of it break the surface, and birds have nidificated on top of the rusty masts. We tried to snorkel around it, but we chose the wrong day, the water was full of thousands of jellyfish in the middle of which we didn't feel like swimming...
The next day, a very strong southerly wind rised, preventing us from leaving the boat for two days. We spent a whole afternoon checking that our two anchors were holding, and with the engine running in case we had to take off quikly.