By the way, where is Cabo Verde ??

December 4th to 9th 2002

For 4 hours we progressed with the engine on a chaotic sea with no wind at all. Rolling, pitching, hitting. Exactly what we like... If only a fish bit our fishing line, but no, not even that to keep us busy. This was a conspiracy to make us doubt, to make us regret the old nine to five days.
Finally, before we were gave way to despair, the wind raised and we finished the trip beautifully on sails and in the silence along with 'TiSaga' and 'Jazz'. The sea, now protected by the island had calmed down. We hugged the shore of Santa Lucia all made of white sand and brwn mountains. Jazz was nice to look at with all her sails out. And in each of the three boats, I'm sure everyone was thinking "now I know why I'm here".

We anchored in front of a very familiar beach. We recognized its rocks, its only palm tree, its crabs running up and down along the waves. Since last year, our computer's screensaver was a picture of this place. It had become a goal, a reward after so many months of unforeseen repairs done in Canarias. We had the feeling of a dream come true.
And to make the dream more real, we put on our flippers and masks and went to take a look at what was under the promising water of our picture. Hou la la ! We had never seen so many fish and so much diversity in one place. Marc didn't know what to shoot. Ludo, more demanding, chose what he felt like eating for diner. Be it garoupas, one of the best fish in Cape Verde, groupers, or even better lobsters ! But that's harder to find...
That day he caught his biggest grouper, it barely fit on the barbecue grill !

To change from our daily aquatic activities, we decided to walk to the beach on the north of the island. The landscape was very arid and dusty. Barely no vegetation except for some bushes and a kind of very bitter pumpki. After an hour, we arrived in a zone of dunes which bordered the beach. We noticed quite a bit of plastic bottles laying around. But that was nothing compared to what we discovered near the water. This wasn't a beach, it was a dump ! As far as our eyes could see, the ground was covered by tangled nets, buoys, plastic containers, and so on. We noticed a lot of spanish boats' names written here and there. It's quite ironical to be in front of this pitiful sight at a time when everyone feels so sorry for the spanish fishermen whose work is being jeopardised by the pollution caused by the sunken tanker "Prestige". I would really like to bring some of them here and ask them how they justify such a quantity of rubbish, and wether this is any better than what they are victim of today. What is scary is to think that Santa Lucia is a very small island and only a very small part of the stuff floating around ends up here. The rest keeps going on further south until it reaches a coast. Not very ecologic either I would say...