We’ve been in our new home in Mindelo, in Cabo Verde, for just over a week now, and we’re settling in nicely. The flat is right near the beach area, which has a couple of bars and restaurants. But the main town is further west, near the marina. That’s where we find ourselves at least once a day, usually in search of food.
It’s really lovely here, as we hope our pictures convey. Every day is a beach day, with sun most of the time and temperatures in the 70s F (20-25 C), day and night. There’s often a nice breeze to keep it from feeling too hot. Talking of which, it’s very windy here. Which is, in part, why the islands are not so verde as you might imagine.
Cabo Verde is a poor nation, more wealthy than most of mainland Africa, but impoverished by every objective standard. Only one of the islands, Sal, has much of a tourist infrastructure. But the hard-working Cabo Verdeans are building one, slowly but surely, elsewhere. People ask us for money a couple of times a day, and many everywhere sell random assemblages of things.
Grocery stores are small with limited selections. The big one has three small freezer cases, in which we found chicken, vegetables, and some processed foods like frozen pizza and hamburger patties. There’s a refrigerated meat case, but not much else is kept cool. Milk is UHT, so unrefrigerated; we couldn’t tell you about the yogurts but they’re also on the shelf. There is tons of alcohol – in some stores, nearly half the shelf space – local and international brands and wine and beer, some local and some Portuguese. There are lots of beans for sale, canned and dried, as well as things like canned linguiça (Portuguese sausage). You can get fish at the fish market, bread from a bakery (and good bread it is!) and vegetables from the ladies at the Municipal Market housed in a nice old building. Our local mini-market has everything the grocery store does minus the freezer section and meat, at a minimal markup.
We aren’t cooking as much as we expected, partly because of the superabundance of cheap and good seafood in restaurants. And partly because we mostly cook vegetables and they are in short supply. (More details about Cabo Verdean food soon.) There’s a small park with a playground near us, and we love that it is always full of children playing. Ditto the beach, never crowded but usually lively.
The music of Cabo Verde is, justifiably, world-famous, especially morna. We know next to nothing about music, but we love this stuff! (More on the music of Cabo Verde coming your way soon too.) Many establishments that call themselves cafes, as well as restaurants and bars, feature live music, either every night or on the weekends. Those with more expensive meals fill up with tourists, but locals also crowd in. And the musicians and the music, so far as we can tell, are the same.
People are very friendly. Many speak some English, and are usually willing to give it a shot even when they do not. We’re working on our Portuguese, but other Romance languages get in our heads. So we can understand sometimes but have yet to utter a correct sentence pronounced correctly.
It’s a good thing we’ve retired: we would find it very distracting to be here with long to-do lists! Our days usually begin with the sun (sunrise ca 7:30). We work on our computers looking out the window until lunchtime, which we often eat in a restaurant. Post-lunch we take a walk or sit on the beach, and there’s usually some exercise thrown in there too. We read, we hear live music, we sit in a coffee shop, we eat dinner, we work on the blog. Any entrepreneurial spirit we might have had has been blown away by the soft breezes. But we’re not complaining!
