I let two girls persuade me to go on a guided tour to the most beautiful beach. I don’t like guided tours because they mean that someone knows where to go, the destination is defined and no surprises are to be expected. All three points are elementary contradictions to real travelling.
Travelling means discovering. Travelling means being surprised, positively and negatively. Travelling means: the journey is the destination. Just as this thought crosses my mind, the guide sitting with us in the back of the open pickup apparently no longer knows which of the many dirt tracks leads to the most beautiful beach. I breathe a sigh of relief.
Santa Maria beach is located in the far south of Boa Vista and is definitely only accessible with off-road vehicles. A few remnants of fishing huts stand alone in the wind. Otherwise, it is exactly how you would imagine a pirate island to be: Golden sand, turquoise water, jagged rocks and big waves. A wrecked car rusts lonely in the stony desert behind it. And unfortunately, like everywhere else on Boa Vista: where there was man, there is dirt. It remains. Always and everywhere.
The group consists mainly of Italians. I can live with that as there are no horny young mating goats. The beach is big enough for everyone. I walk a long way in both directions. Unfortunately, the conditions for kitesurfing are as bad as the hostel manager had predicted. There is a strong current. Rugged coral rocks and a reef in many places. A short but huge shorebreak. Wind 80-90 degrees offshore with strongly changing 10-25 knots.
None of this would put me off. The final KO of a kite ride in paradise is the fact that the nearest fishing boat is at least 20 kilometres away. Not a single other kiter. No rescue. I feel like I’m reading a cookery book on a Sunday, hungry as hell and with an empty pantry. Or a freshly baked ex-con on his first visit to a lap dance bar. The beautiful and at the same time cruel thing about kitesurfing is that it’s not so much about knowing what you can do. It’s about knowing what you can’t do.
We drive 30 minutes over rough tracks to the next small village. There we have goat’s cheese, bock beer, wine and fresh fish from the grill. It’s all very tasty, but the unbelievable noise of the Italians eating gets on my nerves at some point. I squat down in front of the village pub. A couple of Creoles are sitting there, quite buzzed from the grog from Sao Antao, playing really fine Cape Verdean music with ukelele and guitar.
They offer me grog, my cigarettes are wasted, and the master teaches me my first fingerings on the ukelele. After the numerous drinks, it doesn’t really work for me, but it’s still great fun. Due to the lack of a common language, we communicate with hands, feet and music. My surprise is there.
Frank Woelky, born in 1973. Kitesurfer since 1998. Since 2006, I have been combining kitesurfing and web design on trips lasting several months off the beaten track.