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One of the saddest things about humanity is the way that one bad apple can spoil the reputation of a whole bunch. When it comes to cruising the world there are times, indeed, when one unsavoury character really can ruin a place – because one thief, or one small gang of thieves, can easily make a good anchorage unsafe – but on the other hand, just because one anchorage is unsafe it does not mean that the whole country is…
People have a lot of preconceptions about what the weather is like in the Cape Verdes. Now that the developers and holiday salesmen have put the islands on the map most land-lubbers imagine the islands to be hot and sunny. This is not actually the case. The weather here is almost always sunny – that much is true – but in the winter the sky is often hazy, and the almost-constant wind keeps the temperature down. Although they lie in…
See the previous articles in this series: Part I – Wishing You a Green Christmas and Part II – Confessions of a Vegetarian. People are funny about meat eating. Six year olds are not the only ones to find the sight of a pig’s head upsetting, and yet those same people who cry, “Yuk! how could they do that?” will happily tuck into pork pie. Just recently I was shopping with a French friend in a Brazilian market when we came upon a…
See the previous article in this series: Part I – Wishing You a Green Christmas, and the next article: Part III – Killers with a Conscience. I’ve never much liked meat. As a child I used to find it tough and chewy. Pork sausages smelled nice but they were full of nasty gristly bits, and bacon was only edible if the fat had been fried to a crisp. Chicken was fine provided I got the breast; I wasn’t keen on gnawing a bone.…
As I write, Mollymawk is anchored off the little scenic town of Paraty, (just down from Rio de Janeiro) but on the festive day we will probably be at sea, making our way down the coast towards Uruguay. As you sit there, tucking into your turkey, we might be lazing along in the sunshine and having a lovely time… but on the other hand we might be slamming into a south-easterly gale with waves smashing into the topsides and sweeping…
Jacaré is a fishing village situated on the eastern bank of a small muddy river. Rather than carve its way directly out into the sea, the river, on reaching the coast, seems to hesitate. It veers to the north and waits a while before finally taking the plunge. If you care to take a look at a chart of the eastern coast of Brazil you will see that most of its rivers behave in this irrational way. Each one has…
For yachtsmen sailing to Brazil or to the West Indies, the Cape Verde islands lie only a biscuit’s toss from the proper route across the North Atlantic. Like the Canaries, the Cape Verde archipelago makes an ideal stepping stone for the seafarer – and yet remarkably few yachts put in here. Those that do stop tend to go only to Mindelo (Sao Vicente) or to Palmeira (Sal). It is true that the number of visitors has increased radically over the…
The sea shone tantalizingly, down below us, looking as flat and polished as a mirror, but high up above it we were being buffeted by a strong wind. We were sitting on the summit of Monte Leon, which is a little hill on the coast of Sal. Down in the bay below ten or fifteen kitesurfers zoomed to and thro, making the best of the wind. Unlike the windsurfers they didn’t need a wind low down, their kites went up…
The shortest route is not necessarily the quickest or the easiest The passage from the Cape Verdes across the Atlantic to the north-eastern corner of Brazil is pretty much the shortest ocean crossing that one can possibly make – it’s less than half the distance of the passage between the Canary Islands and the Caribbean – but although the miles are far fewer, weather conditions on this route are apt to be somewhat less favourable. Somehow or other you have…
Discounting domestic animals, there are only 13 species of mammal resident in the Cape Verde islands. Three of them are bats, one is a mongoose, and the others are all dolphins and whales – which is cheating, if you ask me. There are also 19 or 20 reptiles living here – but don’t panic, because none of them are snakes. In fact, five of them are turtles, which come here to breed, and the others are all lizards, skinks, and…