Cape Verde holiday - part two

This is part two of my random musings and pictures from my holiday on the island of Sal in Cape Verde. You can find part one here.

After doing a tour of the island, one of the most striking things that hit me when I left my little oasis of an resort is how suddenly I was transformed from the not-in-the-most-rich-layers of society back home, to being filthy rich. The average monthly salary on Cape Verde is around €100 and many people especially around the capital live in shanty towns with huts made from cardboard boxes and random leftover bits and pieces. There is lots of Senegalese immigrants trying to make a living by selling mass produced "souvenirs" to tourists. If you want to buy local souvenirs, it's worth asking your tour guide. We were taken to a small local souvenir shop where all the produce was locally hand made (and you could see the artist chipping away on his coconut as we were perusing the shop). There is also a souvenir market in Santa Maria that sells only local products, which mostly consist of items made of coconut and some salt and liqueurs. As I said in my previous post, the island is dry and resembling a desert, so not much grows here. Apparently if the rain season is good, it's possible to grow crops like corn, watermelons and papayas, but the last good rain season was in 2010, so everything has to be imported to the island.

After seeing the local standard of life, you feel rather privileged to be able to fly across the world to this little island to lie on the beach and listen to the waves. It was also hard to see all the stray cats and dogs, coming to beg for food, looking rather scruffy and malnourished. A lot of people live in houses with no running water, and the government is building housing for the poorest inhabitants at affordable prices to hopefully eradicate the groups of huts in the shanty towns.

The Riu resort where we stayed. It's the biggest resort on the island, located a walking distance from Santa Maria and right on the beach.

There wasn't too much of a chance to get a feel for the local cuisine as our stay was all inclusive. The hotel had a buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner which was very extensive and adequate but in no way impressive. There was fresh fruit and fresh grilled fish every day which were good. There are also three speciality restaurants at the hotel, an Asian, a Cape Verdean, a grill and an African restaurant. The grill and Asian buffets were rather underwhelming whereas the Cape Verdean and African buffets were a bit better.

The seafood mixed grill in the Cape Verdean restaurant.

Not surprisingly, the main food in Cape Verde is fish and seafood. The local fishermen go out in tiny little boats and load their catch of the day onto a truck which drives from the fishing village of Palmeira to the capital and sells the fish off the truck. Depending on the day you can get 2-5 fish for €1. When we were visiting Palmeira there was a big (our guid said approximately 150 kg) swordfish on the docks with the local youngsters chopping off the head and gutting the fish right there on the pier. Although the catch of the day looked huge to us, we were told they catch fish up to 400 kg. 

Catch of the day in Palmeira.

The houses in the fishing village of Palmeira are painted in bright colours.

In Santa Maria the local fish market takes place on the pier and fresh fish comes in between 10 and 12 am. Fish is wheeled around town in wheelbarrows and sold that way too. 

A stall at the local fish market in Santa Maria.

We did a walking tour of the town of Santa Maria which was led by the travel agency guide. The walk from the hotel in to town was around 20 minutes, but much more than the walk in, we enjoyed our private little walk back to the hotel along the beach which took over an hour and takes you around the most southern peak of the island with no other sounds than the thundering roar of the sea in you ears and the feeling of wet sand between your toes.

The most southern peak of the island.

One of the stops on our tour was a children's after school project called Castelos do Sal. Children in Cape Verde only go to school for half a day, and as tourism started to build up on the island about 10 years ago, many children took to begging on the streets instead of going to school. The project provides afternoon activities for children to help their education, teach them life skills and simply keep them off the streets. Kids get a nutritious meal every day, clean clothes and a place to shower as many of them come from the poorest families who don't have showers at home. They take any donations you might have such as pens, paper, kids clothes, toiletries and of course money so if you ever travel here, you can bring your donations with you straight to the charity and be assured they really end up where they are needed.

Another thing our guide told us is that although government health care is more or less affordable, medication is very expensive and often too expensive for the locals. So if you happen to bring any medicines with you, like pain killers or any other medical supplies such as band aids you can leave them to your travel guide at the end of the holiday and they will give them to the local church charities to be given to those who need it. Luckily my dear medical doctor sister had prepared well for our trip with multiple antibiotics, paracetamol and other medicines, so we left behind a big bag of medical supplies.

All in all, we had a lovely holiday enjoying the sea, sun and trying out some watersports. The temperature was very pleasant, although the air is hot there is always a breeze (which sometimes escalates to quite a strong wind resulting in huge waves in the sea and blowing around the sand on the beach so that it feels like needles on your legs). We were a bit careful with food, only eating at the hotel and loading up on probiotics all through the holiday and had no problems, but the word on the street is that you easily contract traveller's ailments, often something to do with the digestive system if you catch my drift. The most sensible things you can bring is a wide brimmed hat and some sandals that don't mind getting wet. A cardigan for the evenings. And most importantly lots and lots of waterproof sun cream and a Kindle or good books.

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Cape Verde and the island of Sal

This won't be much of a food review, just a few thoughts on my holiday in Cape Verde. I have split it into two parts, so more thoughts and photos will follow later on.

I have to admit that when my colleague travelled to CV a few months back I had no idea where the country was located and had to Wikipedia it (yes, if "to google" is a verb, then so is "to Wikipedia"). CV is a group of ten islands (nine of them inhabited) located off the Senegalese coast, and only a three and a half hour flight from Brazil. It gained its independence from Portugal in 1975 and hence the official language is Portugese. At home people speak Creole, a mix of Portugese, Spanish, English and French. Kids learn English in school and as tourism is the main field of employment you will find almost everyone you need to communicate with know English.

Not hard to imagine why many people call it the "New Caribbean"

The island with the most tourists is Sal, one of the islands with the long white sand beaches. This is also where we visited. The island got its name from the salt that was being produced here in the old volcano crater on the island, and over 40,000 tons of salt used to be exported all over the world. Now there is only very small scale production for local use. The salt mines are a tourist attraction and you can go floating in the salt pools which have 26 times the concentration of salt compared to sea water. When you get out and dry off, you skin will feel like sandpaper from all the crystallised salt, it's rather unbelievable.

The salt mines in the volcano crater. The scaffolding used to support the cable car
that transported the salt from the mine to the nearby small harbour.

The reason to come here is the sea, which some people have said is as amazing as the sea in the Caribbean. Tourists come for the white sand beaches and turquoise sea, or to do watersports. Conditions are ideal for windsurfing, kite surfing and scuba diving, particularly in the winter when winds are stronger whereas summer is low season. The rest of the island is rather barren (think of Luke Skywalker's home planet in Star Wars), although if you come around August you can see the hoards of turtles that come to the beaches to lay their eggs in the sand. Unfortunately, we visited just before the main turtle season. It seems like the island is rather protective of its turtles, with restricted beaches and big signs urging you to only join the official turtle tours to minimise the impact on the lives of these lovely animals.

There is over 8 km of white sand beaches on Sal.

Most tourists stay in a few main hotel resorts which are all inclusive, have their own pools and beaches, so there is no need to ever leave the little oasis that is you resort. And there really isn't that many places to go, the two cities on the island are Espargos, the capital, and Santa Maria in the south. The island has around 20,000 inhabitants with 14,000 of them living in Espargos as the locals can't afford to live in Santa Maria, which is essentially a tourist town. Small minibuses shuttle the locals back and forth between the two cities.

View over Espargos, the island's capital, from the hill that the city is built around.

If you come here, you should definitely do a tour of the island. The travel agencies offer their tours, but you get a much better deal if you go with a local guide (well, I didn't do both tours so I can't compare, but at least financially the local tours are a much better deal). You can find the local guides on the beach outside the main resorts, and they will try to sell you their tours very aggressively. If you get stressed by the aggressive marketing, just pick a tour and go at the beginning of your holiday, they do keep good track of who have already been on a tour and will stop harassing you after that.

View of the Sleeping Lion mountains.

We ended up choosing the No Stress tour run by brothers Dilan and Ola, and were very happy with our tour. It seems like all the tours have more or less the same stops, but our tour seemed to outlast the others as we could see some of the other tour cars heading back to the hotel much earlier than we did. You will get a guided tour all around he island with a local guide, our guide was born and raised on Sal. Just one hint, although it seems tempting to sit out on the back of the truck, I suggest you sit inside. Everything worth seeing can be seen and photographed during the stops, you will be protected from the sun and particularly the omnipresent dust and best of all you will have your guide available at all times to answer any questions you may have. I really liked that our guide was very honest in his answers, talking about the good and bad things and showing us all of the island, the natural beauty and also the poor parts. During the tour you will see the sleeping lion mountains, the shark cove with a very high chance of seeing the lemon sharks, the fishing village of Palmeira, the Buracona or Blue Eye (if the sun is shining and you get there before noon), the island capital Espargos, the salt mines and much more. Our tour lasted from 9.30 am to about 4.30 pm which for €25 (and an added €5 for the salt baths) was a rather good deal.

Buracona, or The Blue Eye that is visible when the sun hits a deep well of sea water. It is very striking as you peer down a deep dark well, and once you lean far enough over the edge it comes to view.

Lemon sharks. You could walk almost right up to the sharks in the shallow water.

Part 2 to follow in a few days with more pictures and a few words on the local cuisine.

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Hungarian delicacies

Street food on the day after the wedding... Sausage,
chicken and onion skewers and potatoes cooked in bacon fat.
Feel your arteries clog from the fat and salt.

I recently had the privilege to get aquainted with Hungary during a week long trip to attend a good friend's wedding. I was obviously intrigued about the local food and made sure to sample as many local delicacies as possible. To start with the usual disclaimer, I'm not being compensated by anyone to write this, all opinions are my own.

Our trip started with a few days in Budapest, filled with sightseeing and eating. Then we headed to Pécs in southern Hungary for the wedding, and from there part of the wedding party continued on to the wine region of Villány close to the Croatian border.


How to describe Hungarian food? Well, as my Hungarian friend put it, it's lots of meat with lots of fat and lots of salt. And I fully agree, it's definitely no diet food. I am having trouble doing the top button of my jeans after just a week, so any longer stay would probably have disastrous consequences. Also, being a vegetarian might not be as hard as it has been, but finding good vegetarian dishes is not very easy. I usually don't use any salt in my food, so I was also struggling a bit with the high salt content, be particularly aware of sausages and bacon, they will make you thirsty for a week. 

I'm traditionally not a big fan of cherries (apart from the
fresh ones), but the sour cherry and chocolate ice cream
was pretty awesome.

Hungarian main dishes are often slow cooked meats in the form of stews. There is pörkölt, which is what non-Hungarians would call goulash. A meat stew cooked with veggies and flavoured with paprika. The dish called paprikás is chicken cooked in a similar flavourful sauce, with sour cream added. Both of these can be found in pretty much any Hungarian restaurant and are simple but flavourful. The food at the wedding was a huge platter of cooked meats piled on veggies and rice, with deep fried potato dumplings and deep fried cheese to go with it. Again, very tasty, but you can feel the fat clogging your arteries. The culinary consultant had a huge grin on his face the whole evening.

The meat platter served at the wedding.

The amazingly delicious wedding cake,
raspberry and white chocolate.

One thing the Hungarians certainly do well is bread. Bread is served with pretty much every meal and its both crusty, soft and fresh. For a carboholic, it is pure bliss. I must have eaten loaves and loaves worth of that soft chewy bread, and its perfect to dip into sauces and stews.

Garlic soup with deep fried (yes, you read that right) bread.

Then the really good stuff. Lots and lots of bakeries. Just look for the sign saying Pékség (one of the very few words of Hungarian I managed to pick up during our trip), or follow the heavenly scent. Lots of baked pies and bun type of things with fruit and berries, apples and cherries being the most common I happened upon. Also, there are lots of cakes with walnuts or poppy seeds. I'm not quite sure what I think of the poppy seed fillings, it has quite a distinctive flavour. Mixed with fruit I liked it, but on it's own it wasn't quite sweet enough for me. The one thing most pastries and cakes have in common is that they are not overly sweet which makes the flavours of the fruit stand out much more. 

One of the most common cakes is rétes (strudel). Ooh, the strudel. Served warm with poppy  seed ice cream in a restaurant or still warm, eaten right on the spot from the bakery. In addition to the berry and fruit filled strudel there is one filled with a creamy soft cheese and raisins. So good!

Struuuuudel!!

I also tried out flódni, a famous multi-tiered Hungarian-Jewish cake with layers of walnuts, poppy seeds, apple and jam. I got mine from a coffee shop called Noé Cukrászda (Wesselényi utca 13). It was quite interesting, but with a bit too much poppy seed and walnut for my taste. But definitely worth a try, and it was very pretty.

One of my absolute favourite baked goods was chimney cake (kürtőskalács), which you can buy from touristy street vendors all over town for a few pounds. It's basically a sweet white dough rolled thinly, cut into strips and cooked wrapped around a hot metal cylinder and the outside dipped in cinnamon sugar, vanilla sugar, walnuts, almond shavings or chocolate shavings. It's basically a bun in a funny shape and its really good with a soft inside and nice crispy outside with the cinnamon sugar. The one I liked best was from a small coffee shop called Molnár's (Váci Utca 31, right next to the Elisabeth Bridge).

Chimney cake by the Elisabeth Bridge.

We ended up eating in rather touristy places in Budapest as we walked around town to see all the sights and pretty much stopped for fuel when we ran out of steam (or to get away from the rain). However, a few places did make an impression. A small butcher shop called Belvárosi Disznótoros (V Károlyi Mihály Utca 17) is definitely worth seeing and experiencing. The displays are brimming with meats and sausages, served with salads or fried potatoes on the side. A must for any carnivore.

The carboholic must place is the classic, and very fancy, cafe Gerbeaud (V Vörösmarty tér 7-8). Just pop in to admire the cakes, chocolates and macaroons or, even better, sit down for a cake selection and a huge glass of dark hot chocolate with whipped cream. Yes, it will cost you more than your dinner, but it's worth it.

The cake selection at Gerbeaud. Combined with
hot dark chocolate, it was pure chocolate bliss.

Last but certainly not least is the food market Nagycsarnok (IX Vámház körút 1-3). My love of food markets is no secret, and I loved walking around this one. Butchers, vegetable and fruit sellers and bakers. And quite a lot of touristy things as well, but who wouldn't love bags  of paprika powder with teeny tiny wooden spoons. We bought ridiculously cheap and delicious cherries for less than a quarter of the price we would pay back home, and berries seemed to be very cheap this time of the year as well. We also bought home a ridiculous amount of paprika powder and some goose liver. 

Selection of things to take home: paprika powder,
goose liver and Unicum, the most vile drink known to man.

The omnipresent paprikas.

Wishing cherries were this price in the UK
(less than a pound and a half for a kg)!

You can't talk about Hungary without mentioning the wine. We spent a day in the Villany wine region and got to see the wine cellars of the Bock winery as well as a tour of the actual vineyards of the Gere family winery. 

We also enjoyed a six course wine tasting meal at the Gere winery restaurant which was very memorable and enjoyable. Six delicious courses combined with very good wines. For a light drinker like me, it was rather tough to get through all those wines. Of course we couldn't resist getting a few bottles of wine to take home, we bought a rather expensive (for us) bottle of wine, and now we need some really special occasion to drink it. I really enjoyed staying in the Gere Crocus hotel, it has a lovely wellness spa, very friendly staff and the breakfast buffet was amazing, so a warm recommendation from me.

Pike sushi with cucumber gel, lime, cucumbers and
cucumber mousse from the wine tasting menu.

Another course from the wine tasting menu, grilled duck
liver and duck liver patee with rhubarb.

All in all, I had a great time in Hungary. It was weird travelling in a country where you don't understand a single word of the language, it was definitely a first for me. Even though I don't speak German, Italian or French, I can make out enough to identify words here and there as well as say a few simple sentences. But Hungarian is completely alien. Ironically Hungarian is one of the few languages related to Finnish, but I couldn't detect any similarities whatsoever. But it was quite funny going into a restaurant or shop, and have no idea what you are buying, just point and then taste to see what you got. And to be honest, most people did speak at least a bit of English, and most people working in more touristy places spoke very good English. And I'm not saying I'm expecting everyone to speak English, pretty much everyone I met spoke much better English than I speak Hungarian, so I have nothing to complain about. I'm just saying it's really weird to understand absolutely nothing. But it also leads to fun surprises. Like buying chocolate pralines from the amazing little chocolate shop called Cadeau and just pointing and then eating to find out what it was you bought. And before I finish, there is one non-food related place I just have to rave about, a teeny tiny paper shop called Bomo art (Régiposta Utca, some products are also sold in other paper and book stores in Budapest, and they have a web shop). They make the most amazing leather bound notebooks, calendars, photo albums and other bound books with papers they design themselves. You can also buy the papers and other paper products like post cards. I would have liked to buy everything in the entire store, the products are absolutely beautiful. But with very limited space left in the luggage after wine shopping in Villány earlier, I had to settle for one thing. So we got a beautiful leather bound guest book for the new place. I can't wait to invite guests so that we can start using it (well, after we have moved in of course...).