Great Day (Pics below)

Please note that I had a slight change to my address. Itºs listed below the pics.

So I had a great today. Got up and made an omelet and coffee and walked downstairs to learn some dirty words from my crazy neighbor. He worked on shipping boats all his life and can cuss in about 8 languages. Then I came back upstairs and, on the advice of a neighbor, burned holes in the legs of all of my plastic chairs. They were made in China (like all things here) and the legs will apparently break in about a week if you don’t tie them all together with chord. Anyway, I burned holes in all the legs by heating up a nail and then I ran chord through all the legs and now they’re dret (fine). After that I made a PBJ and packed a bag for the praia (beach). On my way to the beach I ran into Djon, my neighbor and good friend. (My best Cape Verdian friend actually.) I told him I was walking to the beach and he insisted that he go with me. I was sorta in the mood for a walk with my MP3 player, plus I was going to read and relax a little, maybe take some pictures and have a beer in Cruzinha…so I resisted and told him I would be fine on my own, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and now I’m glad for it.

We took the 15 minute walk to Cruzinha and instead of heading West for the big beach that you can see from the road, he told me there were some “secret” beaches not too far to the East. So I took his word for it. Sure enough, about 30 minutes later we landed on what I’ll call Turtle Beach, since it has no official name, and it turned out to have a lot of turtles. It was amazing. It lies at the mouth of a HUGE ribeira, but it’s tiny (I’d say one and half football fields) and you can’t see it from the footpath. Once you climb down into it, there’s a big open sandy area, and an outcropping of rock that provides plenty of shade. There were these curios little chicken-wire baskets with signs all over them, and the saigns were posted by the Cape Verdian government and announce that the area within the wire was a confirmed turtle nest, threatened imprisonment to anyone who disturned the nest, and even announced the approximate date that the eggs would hatch. (It’s the 22 of this month, so I think I’ll go camp out on the beach for a couple days and see if I can see it happening.) Past the beach, the water is knee deep for about 30 yards out, with waist high waves. Past that there is a little drop off and it’s about neck deep, go past that, and the earth drops away to the bottom of the ocean. Fundo. (Deep.) So I was getting all settled and SO happy for the spectacular beach, when Djon said no’bei (Let’s go), he wanted to go to the other, better “secret” beach, and we headed off.

20 more minutes along the coast path, which is a worn and weathered cobblestone trail about 4 feet wide, we left the trail and climbed down into another ribeira and we txiga (arrive) at another stunning beach. It was huge, maybe 10 football fields, and not another soul in site. It is surrounded by steep, imposing mountains, and we could see the coast path above us. Big, 8 foot waves were crashing on a sandbar about 20 yards out, but there was a nice little 6 foot deep channel in between the beach and the sandbar with mostly calm-ish, crystal blue water, and we swam laps in it for about a half hour. Dipos (after, next, then) I busted out my kite (the wind was roaring today), got it in the air, and Djon nearly shit his pants. I’m fairly certain from his reaction that he had never seen or conceived of anything quite like it because he was absolutely speechless. For those of you that haven’t seen it before, it’s a REAL big, M-shaped 4-line kite, and you can mais or menos (more or less) drive it like a race car, do dive-bombs, make it dip into the ocean waves, flip and spin, stop and start etc.) Anyway, he came over and practically ripped the lines out of my hand before I could warn him about its pull, and he was immediately yanked face-first into the sand. This only served to increase his fascination, and within minutes, he had forgotten I was even there, and had a mile-wide smile plastered on his face for the next 3 hours. After that short span, he’s already as good with it as I am, and when he’d finally had enough, he came over to where I was sitting and, grinning like a cat, asked if we could come back tomorrow to fly it some more.

After the beaches we walked back to Cruzinha and had a beer and some fried eel, and corn-battered octopus at Djon’s aunt’s house, and then she taught me to play biska, which is a very fun card game. Dipos, we headed back up the mountain to Cha di Igreja. We’d been gone 7 hours. When I walked in my house, there was a huge cake sitting on my kitchen table with “Friends: Caley, Silveria, Alecia” written on it. Too cool. Silveria and Alecia were the first two people I met here in Cha. They’ve been helping me out by teaching me some Sanpadjudo kriolu, showing me around town and introducing me to people, cooking breakfast for me, etc., and I’ve been teaching them English. “Friends” was the first word we taught each other. Also, they’re both ridiculously good-looking, and don’t usually wear much in the way of clothing, as is the style in Cha de Igreja. More on that another time.

Anyway, great, great day today. Pictures are below. I’m never coming home. 