Cabo Verde: no stress

Arrival in Palmeira, Ilha do Sal

Palmeira is one of three Ports of Entry in Cabo Verde and, as a consequence, its tight little recreational and fishing harbour can be busy with visiting yachts. It lies inshore of the commercial harbour, in a small bay filled almost entirely with a jam-packed field of mooring-buoys. Behind that, exposed to wind and swell and just behind the surf break is the anchoring area.

When we arrived, both the mooring field and the anchorage seemed to be absolutely full with boats of all sorts and in all conditions packed tightly enough that we couldn’t see through to the fishing quay.

Anchor or buoy?

As we tentatively motored in a young bloke in a dinghy had come up and asked if we wanted to pick up a mooring buoy or would prefer to anchor. Our preference is always to anchor if possible but even without that preference, those buoys looked particularly dubious.

The young fellow though was unperturbed when we said we wanted to anchor and happily pointed out a spot that seemed way to close to the nearby boats but which we decided to give a try. The first drop had us way too close to a boat downwind but the second gave us enough distance and was good enough.

Choosing to anchor turned out to be the good choice; the French boat that picked up that buoy a few hours after we had declined it, found themselves, just two days later when the wind picked up, heading out to sea a good clip with the buoy still attached.

The town of Palmeira

Palmeira is a ramshackle kind of place. At one point, not too long ago I suspect, it was just a little fishing village with a moderately well protected harbour that also served as the freight port for the island of Sal.

With the development of mass tourism on the island, Palmeira’s commercial port has become busier, if not busy, and the town has grown along with it, adding streets and apartment buildings in a seemingly random kind of way and not necessarily in the order that one might normally expect, e.g. apartment buildings occupied long before streets are put in.

In the older parts of town, colourfully painted bungalows predominate while further away low apartment buildings, some neatly finished, others just unpainted grey blocks with tax-minimising, unfinished upper floors, cluster along sketchy streets of cobble, tarmac and dirt.

While it gives the impression of being poor and unfinished and with only the most fleeting attention given to beautification, Palmeira is unlovely in a cheery and unapologetic kind of way that makes it cute and endearing.

People are friendly and helpful, there are busy bars and restaurants and, on the fishing quay, the town gathers to chew the fat and pass the time. It is without a doubt a place that is very much at ease with itself – unconcerned by appearances and definitely up for a Friday night of dancing and refreshing beverages.

Dinghy-guarding

Our dinghy ride in from Yuma wound through the anchorage past old hulks, new yachts and floating lines to the narrow stone steps at the fishing quay. Here, one is greeted by a bevy of boys, all of whom should definitely have been in school and none of whom would have been able to produce a note from their mother explaining why they were not there. These cocky young blokes take your lines and generally get in your way as a show of being of assistance.

The end goal here is an offer to guard the dinghy while you are ashore. One hundred escudos seals this particular deal and, as you walk away, so do they. There is no need to be concerned though, this is the price of accessing the quay and the dinghy is safe.

Upon your return the boys (perhaps the same ones) will, if not otherwise occupied, untangle it from the cluster of other dinghies and help you load up and push off. A very fine service, though how it sets them up for life isn’t immediately obvious to an over-educated westerner. Good luck lads.

Bart joins us in Cabo Verde

We spent a few days anchored in Palmeira harbour. The most important thing we had to do here, however, was to pick up our good mate, Bart, who had flown down from the Netherlands to join us for two weeks. He arrived in Palmeira the day after us with his usual big smile and his luggage packed full of ‘small’ things that we had asked him to bring from the Netherlands. What a fine fellow!

With strong winds blowing (how unusual!) we decided to wait a few days for better weather and so spent some time recovering from, and tidying up the boat after, our 6-day passage from El Hierro. We wandered around the town and its surrounds, did some provisioning and made a couple of excursions to other spots on the island of Sal.

At the Esplanada Rotterdam Bar and Restaurant, Bart treated us to a meal of the rather delicious garoupa (a type of small coral cod). This soft fleshed fish was a dish we would return to again and again in Cabo Verde and a species we would see each time when we snorkeling in CV waters.

One of the seven wonders of Cabo Verde

Perhaps the standout excursion was a taxi ride to the saltworks at Pedro de Luma. Sal, like all of the Cabo Verde islands, is volcanic in origin and as a consequence it is dotted with old cinder cones and other volcanic remnants.

These almost geometric landforms are very pleasing to the eyes of a couple that live less than a kilometre from a very similarly shaped cinder cone in northern Australia.

One old crater, on the north eastern side of the island, sits low enough that the floor of its still well-formed crater fills shallowly with sea water with each rising tide, before then draining on the ebb.

With strong winds dominating and strong sunshine the rule, this makes for excellent evaporative conditions and produces natural saltpans.

In the early 19^th century, a bit of reorganising of the saltpans and of the volcano wall turned the Pedro de Lume crater into a commercial salt works operation that today is a UNESCO World Heritage site – one where you can do some nice walks and float around in some rather smelly but exceedingly salty water.