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Cape Verde: Island Life Begins On Boa Vista
It looks a little strange from the air, rolling dunes topped with tufted grasses leading to desert-like landscapes where angular outcrops stand above dry, waterless canyons, dunes which form the hinterland to miles of empty golden beach. There’s not a single building to be seen until just before the wheels of the aeroplane touch down on the tarmac – and even then, it’s an airport terminal which looks more like a sand castle than a transport hub. The island of Boa Vista fights two perpetual battles with nature. One, Sahara sand from continental Africa blows constantly across the island, shifting dunes from east to west and regularly forming damaging sand…
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Next Up: Cape Verde Islands
It’s time to load those backpacks again and head out of the rain which continues to douse England. This trip will be a short one by our standards, just a three week tour to see some of the Cape Verde Islands and witness for ourselves the exotic sounding mix of African and Portuguese cultures. We’re off on Monday (20th), flying out to the island of Boa Vista via Lisbon. Moving between the islands is not straightforward with conflicting on line information about both ferries and flights. As a result we haven’t yet finalised all of our plans and will see what we can do once we get to the second…
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Chasing Rainbows
“Customer Service, how can I help you?” “Oh hello, I wonder if you can. We have an existing booking with connecting flights in Lisbon, but we’re a little bit worried about the short connection time at Lisbon Airport. Is it possible to change just the first flight, the one from Heathrow to Lisbon?” He asks for our booking reference, then goes quiet. Canned music messes with my ears for a while and then he’s back. “I am just checking your flights, you should be OK. The connecting flight will be OK”. “Yes but we’re worried. If we miss that second flight, there isn’t another one to that destination for three…
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Storm Ciarán & Friends
By Tuesday the TV news is full of it. Never mind the wars raging in both Europe and the Middle East, there is, it seems, a storm heading towards Britain which is akin to the four horsemen of the apocalypse powering across the Atlantic to wreak devastation on our forlorn shores. Storm Ciarán, somebody somewhere has decided. With Ciarán due to enter the fray Wednesday night into Thursday, we bring our plans forward by 24 hours and make the 350-mile 6-hour drive to Cornwall ahead of those “essential travel only” messages which will no doubt soon boom across the nation. We hole up, batten down, listen to the wind as…
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The Lefkosa Half Of Nicosia
A small sign saying “Pacific Car Rental return point” is all there is to guide us at Ercan/Lefkosa airport, and with no office presence, it’s soon clear that we have to phone Pacific for them to come and collect the car. “I have no drivers just now”, she says when we call, “send me photographs of the car and leave the key under the driver’s mat, we will pick up the car later”. This means that we leave an unmanned rental car parked on double yellow lines immediately outside the airport terminal where it will probably stay untouched for at least a couple of hours – just imagine the consequences…
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Escaping Cyprusgrad: The Better Parts Of The East Coast
There’s a palpable air of relief in the car as we drive past the little harbour at Bogaz, knowing now that the horrors of Cyprusgrad are behind us, at least for a few hours. The land opens up to olive groves, fruit trees and even vineyards, then ploughed fields and vegetable crops, and at last there isn’t a high rise or a construction site to be seen. Turning east into the start of the island’s guitar neck, we are, somewhat ominously, suddenly on a brand new roadway of pristine black tarmac. Ominous because, why build a new road to nowhere unless you have development plans? We decide not to dwell…
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Cyprus: The East Coast And Its Unexpected Horrors
Rather than take the bigger roads via Lefkosa we opt for what should be a more scenic route along the northern shores, then turn south to head over the mountains to Iskele on the east facing coast. The stretch along the north coast is remarkable for one giant, unmissable feature: construction works. It’s been well documented that President Erdogan is keen for North Cyprus to become a tourist hotspot, but the sheer scale of development is unimaginable. Soon, at this rate, the flatlands between the mountains and the sea will be full, there will be nothing to see but concrete, steel and high rise, such is the breathtaking expanse of…
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Dubious Saints, Mutant Sheep & Castles In The Air: Cyprus Unfolds
The downpour is so intense that we don’t really want to leave the boat, but we have to get back to the apartment somehow so it’s heads down and off into the onslaught. “Goodbye”, shouts Captain Bayram as we head off, adding, “remember, tomorrow there is worse rain, very bad”. He isn’t kidding either. By the time we return next day from a rather fruitless trip on the dolmus out to Lapta village, the streets of Girne are rivers, floodwater several inches deep racing down every slope and finding every shortcut through town. It’s an outrageous deluge which lasts for hours and has locals laughing and scurrying for cover in…
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Into The Northern Half Of Cyprus
So here we are in the northern half of this partitioned country, in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, a self-declared independent nation recognised as such only by Turkey itself. The region is accepted by the UN as not being under the control of the Cypriot Government; Cyprus is the only EU country with a section not governed by that organisation’s laws. Despite loosening of controls on the partition line, there are still restrictions in place, which is how we come to be in our current situation. You see, we had the very good idea that it would be interesting to travel through the two separate halves of Cyprus, to…
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Back North To Fes, Then West To Casablanca
Our farewells with Mohammed and the other guys at Merzouga are heartfelt; we feel like we’re leaving friends behind while Mohammed says they will miss us and implores us to return some day. We say we may do, but of course inside we know it’s not going to happen, there’s still a whole world out there. The need to take the Duster back to Fes means retracing our steps through the Ziz valley, past and over the Middle Atlas mountains, but with an overnight call in a different town – not Errachidia this time, but the unassuming town of Midelt. This is basically a dormitory stop for food and sleep,…
