Sal Vila Verde & Santa Maria pier, Cape Verde

Sal is one of nine inhabited islands in the Cape Verde archipelago. Cape Verde lies about 350 km off the coast of West Africa, off Senegal and The Gambia. Along with Boa Vista, Sal attracts the most tourists. It is a small island, only 30 x 12 km. It is very flat and desert like. It is one of the windward islands of Cape Verde with the wind coming from Africa. The main tourist activities are wind based, as the wind blows all year round.

I stayed just outside the small town of Santa Maria. View from my balcony, a desert landscape with Santa Maria to the right in the distance. You can see the palms are all blowing in the wind. A 'dusty' sunrise, chilly at first but it got up to 27 C during the day -

I stayed at Vila Verde -

It is an absolutely huge complex although only one block is the hotel, the many other blocks are apartments, mostly deserted due to the economic problems in Europe. It is a bit of a ghost town and is certainly quiet

The Cactus block, which is the hotel

This was part of my breakfast, missing from the photo is a bowl of fruit and a basket of toast!

Breakfast kept me going all day and in the evening I had a fish dinner. Everyday the fishermen bring their catch to the pier in Santa Maria where it is immediately distributed. Much of it has already been pre-ordered by restaurants. The fish include tuna, wahoo and garoupa. Weighing the catch -

 The red ones are red garoupa, I had a large one for dinner and it cost 8.50 €.

  The long ones are wahoo -

The sea is nice and blue and there are no oil smears around the pier and no rubbish. In fact there is no rubbish anywhere.

 The people all have hand held scales -

The ladies from the pier now sell their fish on the streets, the lady in blue (below) appears in one of the photos above on the pier.

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See my other Cape Verde blogs :

Salt from Sal

Santa Maria town & people

Scenery in southern Sal

Scenery in northern Sal

Flora & fauna of Sal

Sal procession to remember slavery, Cape Verde

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© Liz Price
No reproduction without permission