Ahh, at last… a day to do nothing, a day with no pressure to see anything. After a leisurely breakfast, we headed to the beach at 10AM - the stress of finding lounge chairs having been resolved by me running down to the pool are at 7:30AM to secure some chairs! We sat there til 12:30PM, when we ate lunch. At 1:30PM, we decided to jump in a taxi to do a short visit to nearby Sal Rei. The rest of the afternoon saw us chillax by the pool for another couple of hours, before taking a 3KM walk on the beach.
As we were only permitted two speciality restaurant dinners for our four-night stay, we ate dinner at the buffet around 7:30PM and then took in a bit of the bi-weekly ‘White Party’ before calling it a day.
We are homeward bound tomorrow. :-(
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| The RIU Karamboa has quite a few cats, who seem to be well fed by guests and are living the high life. |
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| The blanket in our room was turned into a swan by the housekeeper. |
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| A massive pot of cachupa, Cabo Verde’s best-known dish. |
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Sal Rei
Sal Rei is the main town on Boa Vista, but it is still a pretty small place. It does make for a nice opportunity to leave the resort and get a glimpse of the local life. Essentially, it is a fishing community, although you can tell that, these days, workers are perhaps more involved in the burgeoning hospitality industry brought by the mega resorts than they are in the fishing industry. We took a taxi to and from the RIU Karamboa, just to stroll the streets for an hour this afternoon. |
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| The brand spankin’ new Sal Rei Square, which has been under complete refurbishment since the start of the pandemic. It’s a fairly large and elaborate square, especially by African standards for a town square and also given the small size of Sal Rei. |
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| The new square features two very artistically-designed bench areas - very impressive! |
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| The Church of Sao Isabel in the town square. |
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| Sometimes a bit of paint and creativity can turn ‘delapidated’ into ‘quasi-cool’! |
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| A typical street in Sal Rei. |
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| Souvenirs made with things that have washed up on the beach. |
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| ‘Eleanor’ from Sal Rei showing Pam how to carry an entire souvenir shop on her head! |
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| Monte Santo Antonio (left) and Rocha Estancia (right) are two of the highest peaks on Boa Vsta. As seen from Sal Rei. |
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| The Sal Rei harbour is not suffering from a lack of fishing boats! |
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| The white peaks in the distance are our hotel. |
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| Our 3KM walk on Dunas Beach at the end of the afternoon. |
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| This rock cairn has been built by hotel guests. It seems like everyone leaves a stone. I added one for us! |
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| Blue bottle jelly fish. The stingers are poisonous, we are told. |
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| The flag of Cabo Verde, which was adopted following independence from Portugal in 1975, flying proudly on Dunas Beach. |
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| To both the left and right of the hotel property one finds eight shacks, selling souvenirs. Below, you will see the shacks to the right of the hotel, once of which was sporting the sign above. (The word “no”, as in “no stress”, seems to be blocked.) |
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| Meet Victor, proud owner of shack #5, the only one that was still open when we walked pastt at 6PM. Victor quickly told us that he resembles Bob Marley of Jamaican fame. |
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As we arrived back from our walk, the sun was just about to set (6:30PM).
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| Every second Friday, the RIU Karamboa has a ‘white party’. Everyone is expected to wear white, and the gift shop can help, if you left home without a white outfit. It was quite funny, people in their 50s and 60s (the vast majority of guests are in that age demographic) whoopin’ it up, dancing and doing a konga line, as if reliving their late teens. |
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