Santa Maria!

At dawn, above the unfinished poor houses of Santa Maria, a dead dog crawls across the cobbled street in front of me with its tail between its legs. Somewhere Ennio Morricone is playing. A prairie bush blowing in the dust is the only thing missing for the perfect tombstone feeling.

Sal is a ghost town at the beginning of October. The wind statistics for October show 68% gliding wind, but unfortunately it doesn’t reach the 15 knots required for my weight class for a whole week. The luxury hotels on the outskirts of the town are only a quarter full. Locals train on the beach in the first rays of sunshine. I understand the many blonde Euro-females with their pieces of chocolate. Fishermen sit half asleep on the quay.

I work a lot. In the evening, I stroll through the often dark alleyways during the power cut and am amused by the guided groups of tourists who don’t even dare to come here alone from the nearby luxury resorts.

Yes, there are dangerous spots and robberies on Cape Verde. But not here. As we overtake, I shout a not-so-aggressive “Oi!” at the last one in the group. He actually jumps a little to the side. Mission accomplished.

My father once made a real pig of me on my trip around the world for my glorified travel views: “These people have really earned their holiday! You have no right to drag them through the mud like that because of their behaviour!”

After my trip around the world, I invited him to Egypt for all the things he had organised for me while I was away. Fat terror tourists danced the Macarena in the turquoise Red Sea, swaying to loud Eurotechno mojitos. I really can’t remember exactly what he said about it at the time. But it made a big impression on me. It would certainly have been the most biting blog post since the invention of the jew’s harp.

Sal is small and dusty. Nothing grows here, everything is imported. Some might call it desolate. Even I often find it difficult to recognise its beauty.

If I don’t happen to bump into his wave saint Mitu Monteiro on the beach, the highlight of my day is usually a drunk man singing sad fado to a heavily out-of-tune guitar across the road as I fall asleep early. Unless, of course, the crazy Dutch granny from the room opposite tries to squeeze in another legendary conversation about the impossibility of taking her lingerie to the dry cleaners. That usually tops the drunken singer. Especially when she assures me once again that she would never, absolutely NEVER have got stuck in the caves of Gran Canaria on one of her mescaline or LSD trips. Santa Maria!