Feeling at home in Ribeira do Paúl

Having heard positive stories about walking on the island of Santo Antão from Bart, and from other sailors in the marina, we decided to take a break from sailing for couple of days, and booked ourselves into a small ‘eco-lodge’ called Aldeia Manga in the valley of Ribeira do Paúl.

What a landscape!

What with all the catabatic winds and boats dragging anchor in Cabo Verde, we thought it safer to leave Yuma tied up in the Mindelo Marina, and caught a ferry across to Porto Novo.

Here, a taxi was waiting for us to take us to our accommodation via the old mountain road, rather than the short coastal road.

This longer detour was well worth it passing through incredibly steep mountainous landscapes, with stunning views into the Cova volcano crater and over the Atlantic Ocean.

After settling in, and enjoying lunch at Aldeia Manga with more great views, this time across the valley, we decided to do a relatively short walk to warm up for a longer walk up to the volcano crater the next day.

We first followed the main road, but then turned off onto one of the many small, paved walking paths that meander through the fields and past little farms, houses and hamlets.

This maze of walking paths is still very much being used by the locals as well, to the extent that we were regularly taken over by folk being more familiar with the paths than us. Irrespective of whether they had had a more than a few drinks or not!

Just like home

The valley of Ribeira do Paúl is one of the few areas in Cabo Verde that is wet enough to support extensive and intensive small-scale agriculture.

A large variety of crops are being grown, casava, taro, sugarcane, herbs, cabbage, peppers, beans, mango, and papaya, all of this done with the support of little irrigation dams and channels that wind like a spider’s web all across the valley.

These crops are all very familiar to us from Far North Queensland, so we started to feel right at home! Even more so when we discovered a variety of weeds that are, unfortunately, also very common at our place back home, and across the Wet Tropics in Australia. Old friends and old enemies.

With the similar temperatures and humidity, the moist, rich air even smelt like home. We started to get a little bit homesick for our house in the Australian rainforest.

Unlike back home though, when ready for markets, the produce in this valley was carried by donkey or on people’s heads, in impressively large amounts along the narrow walking paths, and left at collection points at road heads where pick-up trucks would take them on to market.

Our hike up to the Cova crater

The next day, having survived our warm-up hike, we felt warmed up enough to tackle the walk up to the Cova crater and back. This was a relatively short walk, only 11.5km, but with a bit of an ascent (and subsequent descent), about 1,200m. In other words, short and steep.

The first kilometres were along the main road was quite easy, however, after the turn-off onto the trail leading to the crater, things got a bit steeper.

And steeper and steeper still! Papua New Guineas, who in our experience like to build their walking tracks straight up steep mountains rather than zig-zagging more carefully up the slopes, would have enjoyed some of these sections.

With this steep climbing, we were very glad for the overcast weather, and the slight drizzle further up along the slopes. While making things a bit slippery on the path, it meant that it was cool and fresh instead of hot and humid. And it also muffled the sounds from the valley below, giving us a welcome break from the continuous sound of (generally loud) music that one encounters seemingly everywhere in Cabo Verde.

We were by no means the only ones on the track that day, but we seemed to be one of the last ones to start the climb up. Large guided groups, smaller families, couples and single hikers came down the slopes, often heralded by that metal walking stick ‘tick-tick-tick’ that can be heard well before the walker can be seen. Evidently, starting the climb early to beat the heat was the thing to do, so we were even happier with the overcast and cool conditions.

Around lunch time, after having walked in a thick mist for the last half hour, we walked onto crater’s rim, only to find (surprise, surprise) that the view into the crater was one of clouds and mist. Never mind, we had seen the crater the day before, and the current conditions brought their own charm and atmosphere.

Funnily enough, a bit further along the crater’s edge we saw a single cow tethered to a tree – how the hell did that get up here? Then we heard the sound of cars and figured that there was clearly an easier way to get up here than the trail we had just climbed.

The descent down was easier, as they generally are, even though we had to be careful on the wet rocks. That night, we slept like logs, and even more so since we were in a bed that, for the first time in months, was not rolling around with the swell!

No stress, this is Cabo Verde!

Having asked the lodge to arrange transport for us back to the 1600 ferry the day before we were leaving, we were very happy to learn that, around lunchtime on the day of our departure, transport had been arranged. Specifically, we could catch a ride on an aluguer from the lodge that would take us down the valley, then transfer to another aluguer that would then take us to Porto Novo via the new coastal road.

Happily, we sat down in our first aluguer with our bags and enjoyed the views of the valley. At one of the many stops, the driver motioned us to get out and pointed to another aluguer for us to transfer to. Great then was our surprise when this aluguer commenced to drive back up into the valley, not only past our lodge, but all the way to the top to where we had started our trail up to the crater! Ehm, were we going to get to our ferry in time?

No stress! Once the aluguer was full with people, it turned around and sped down the valley, along the new coastal road, and arrived well in time for all the passengers to board the ferry to São Vincente. There we found Yuma still safely tied up and rocking and rolling on the floating pontoons of Mindelo Marina.