Cape Verde: Fogo!

I loved all three places that we visited in Cape Verde, but Fogo was probably the most interesting. Since we only had one day to stay on the island, we hired the German owner of the B&B, Mike, to plan a day-trip for us. He was somewhat of an inspiration to our CIEE Cape Verde study center dream, as he and his wife had settled in Fogo when they saw an advertisement for a B&B for sale, and after a brief trip, had moved here knowing no Portuguese or Creole. I'm pretty sure that after five minutes, we were all ready to pack up and move to the island as well.

We first traveled by van up the winding roads from the little town of Sao Filipe to the base of the volcano. While we had thought that we wanted to climb the large volcano, we soon realized that we were vastly underprepared for the all day hike. The hike up the little volcano was difficult enough; as it was just an uphill climb on loose, prickly gravel. The volcano is active, and as you reach the top, you can smell the sulfur and feel the heat through openings in the rock.
It is an amazingly beautiful and bizarre looking place; as my friend said, it looked like the lovechild of the Grand Canyon and Mars.


Destroyed by past lava flows, a very small town has popped up in the shadow of the volcano. It was probably my favorite little town we visited. Although it doesn't sounds like a beautiful place to live, the contrast between the barrenness of the volcanic landscape and the little hut-like houses surrounded by trees and flowers was unique and oddly magical. After the madness of Dakar, it was just so tranquil and quiet. We stopped and ate a delicious Cape Verdean lunch here.


After lunch, we did the normal tourist-y wine tasting that was actually comical in our lack of wine knowledge or taste. Then we headed back to Sao Filipe where we explored the quiet streets, searched (in vain) for ice cream, and played another rousing game of Bananagrams. That night we found our way to a restaurant that we thought would have pizza, but instead, we ended up eating the West African equivalent of hamburgers - with a fried egg, of course - and watching a French music video countdown, which was actually quite entertaining. We returned back to the B&B and prepared for the next morning's ferry ride back to Santiago and our last destination, Cidade Velha.