So I ended the last post with the beginning of our journey from Praia to the island of Fogo. I should preface the account of our experience by saying that I love traveling on boats - I think it's a generic trait that I inherited from my dad. I also love the occasional three hour break in air conditioning and watching third-rate American comedies dubbed into Portuguese. Yet all of these lovely factors could not make up for the fact that the ferry ride to Fogo was one of the longest four hour periods of my life.
The extra sea sickness bags should have been the first tip off; we were only on our way for a half hour when the first sounds of retching began. I have been pretty impressed with my sturdiness in Africa. Neither Senegalese mystery meat, sour milk dishes, 100 degree heat indexes, or precariously rocking ferries have defeated me (inchallah). But the combination of sounds and smells of people being sick all around me, the sight of the ocean rising and falling outside of my window, and the atrocious Adam Sandler comedy were the closest I've gotten. Oddly enough, the four American girls managed much better than the Cape Verdeans on board, much to the relief of the stoic ferry attendants who spent most of their time handing out extra seasickness bags and cleaning up after their passengers.
Despite the fact that we were extremely grateful to be off the ferry, the arrival into Fogo caused some panic. We arrived around 9pm, a little over an hour after we thought. It was dark when we arrived in the rather industrial looking port, and we were unable to see a road or any sign of life at all. We only saw a chain link fence with a police officer and a large crowd of people congregated close behind it. As the people around us mulled around searching for their bags, we moved closer and clung to our backpacks with a shared panic with what my travel companion termed a gazelle herd mentality. The question of "what have we gotten ourselves into?" - so commonly employed in Dakar - suddenly became relevant in Cape Verde.
You know how when Snow White is fleeing the witch, she runs through the forest and sees monsters all around her? And then she realizes that they are only trees and all the cute little forest animals pop out and comfort her? The Snow White phenomenon seemed to happen a lot to our group who had been trained in Dakarois worst case security scenarios. The mob of swindlers and thieves behind the fence turned out to be relatives waiting for their families to arrive; the reason we couldn't see the road was because there were mountains around us. After we had calmed down and regained our senses, we found a taxi who knew the owner of the B&B we were traveling to and who could speak a little English. Still a bit flustered and unfamiliar with the Cape Verdean currency, as the driver pulled away from our B&B, we realized that we had majorly overpaid. In Cape Verde unlike Dakar you don't barter for taxis, and in our confusion, we hadn't distinguished the difference between 5000 CFA and 5000 escudoes. While Mike, our friendly German host, explained the layout of our rooms and the plan for the next day, I was the first to realize what had happened. We were almost sick at the thought that we had gotten completely ripped off, not in Dakar, but on the little island of Fogo. To console ourselves, we went to the little restaurant nearby to get some dinner and then returned to our lovely, IKEA-like room and went to bed.
The next morning, we had another amazing breakfast - this time with absolutely delicious homemade guava jam - and prepared for our tour of the island with Mike. But before we left, we had a surprise: our taxi driver from the night before who we had roundly abused had returned rather sheepishly because he had realized that through a miscommunication we had given more money than the actual fare and he returned the remainder to us. Our day was already off to a good start!
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