Cape Verde Diary - The side of the island tourists don't get to see..

Here i am, at the end of day two to writte a few lines as I promissed. Yesterday was to exhaustive for me to writte something...

So, it's a four hour flight separating Lisbon and the Santiago Island, located in the Atlantic Ocean, just North of the Equator in a sub-tropical region. The good side of travelling next to the window is you can always take some impressive pictures!

Leaving Lisbon...

... and then arriving Cape Verde.

This is the largest of the ten islands of Cape Verde, the capital, a place with litlle less than 300 000 inhabitants.

In the airport we met our host for these days, one of the members of the organization of Grito Rock Festival, aswell as some other members of his crew. All very warm and always with a smile on their faces, wich seems to be a rule around! I've definitly never been in another country were everybody is so polite in the streets like this! Must be the constant good weather...

After droping us at the Portugues Embassy, where we'll be staying, he took us for a quick tour and asked us if we want to meet the zone where tourist don't usualy go... and we're obviously talking about the most poor side of the Island, the ghetto, as he refers to it. Well, a chance to visit a place like this with someone local is something with don't get everyday, so we said yes.

For us, europeans that had never came to Africa, it's a bit shocking at first to see the conditions around, and the way people live. But the truth is no one seemed to care much about that, and we find a huge sense of comunnity and sharing. People may not have much, but they don't hesitate in share what they have with you.
And a thing so basic and that it's so rare to see were I come from these days, happens a lot around: children playing in the streets...

Plus, everybody seems happy to have you around and invites you to come back. We will for sure, they have an amazing home made grogue! It's the national alcoholic beverage, rum distilled from sugar cane. For some reason they call it the gold of Cape Verde...

And the rest of the day has little less story, some dudes tired and a tinny bit drunk trying to get some rest for the next day!

To be continued...