Really, I did love Cape Verde, but I would have loved the 1-week vacation I planned on spending, instead of the nearly 2 weeks that Air Senegal gave us as a result of changed and missed flights.
Cabo Verde is a country composed of several volcanic islands off the coast of West Africa. It used to be a Portuguese colony, where the Portuguese brought Africans to grow sugar. I would have liked it coming from America, but coming from Senegal it was even more spectacular. Mountains! Trees! Clean air! Cars that stop for you when you cross the street! The northern islands were even better than Praia; we stayed in a tiny town called Paùl on the island of Santo Antao, where we spent six hours hiking down from the mountains towards the ocean, and had a black sand beach all to ourselves for a whole day. The only problem? The boat ride to get there. It was described to us as a 15-hour ride, and how wrong we were to believe them. It was actually much less traumatic than we expected before going. We didn't really know how to grocery shop before, though, and we came prepared with lots of chips, chocolate, and beer, which wasn't the best food for a whole day. The most ironic part of this boat ride was when we found out that we could take a plane back to Praia for only $20 more. And it only took one hour.
We came back to Praia for our last few days. The morning of the day we were supposed to fly home, we sent two people to the Air Senegal office to make sure our flight info was the same. We probably should not have been so surprised to find out that they had moved our flight to the day before, and that there wasn't another flight for 5 days. After all, it is Senegal. We hadn't really budgeted for two weeks, so we had to get creative. We stayed in a disgusting hostel and made cheese and ham sandwiches for 3 days.
While we were freaking out about what to do about our predicament, Lindsay made the fateful suggestion to go to the American Embassy. When we got there, they said they couldn't really help us but all we could do was use the phone to make free calls to America. We stayed there until closing, and Lesley, the woman who worked there, told us she wasn't really supposed to, but she was going to drive us to our hostel and take us out for dinner. We went to a cafe owned by a delightful Scotsman named Fraser, and then afterwards Lesley invited us to our house to watch Twilight, the trashy teen vampire movie. She also let us make long-distance phone calls, made us cookies and brownies, and the best part... use her washing machine and dryer! (It would seem a lot more exciting if you had been washing your jeans by hand for the last 3 months) The taste of America was just what we needed to keep us going. And thanks to Lesley, we also met many cool Peace Corps volunteers and went swimming in the embassy pool. Basically Lesley saved the morale of our group and made our last 4 days a lot better, but I was still jumping (literally) with joy to finally come back to Dakar. Which is more than can be said for most of my friends who came with me. It was a beautiful trip and I loved it, but I'm used to Dakar. It's true that nothing ever works and things never happen when or how they are supposed to, but it's home.
I know it seems like I am just complaining about the trip and I'm sorry. It really was wonderful, but we spent so much time dealing with ridiculous things that it's what I remember. Fortunately, we can laugh about them now.
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