After a slightly dreary summer, hubby and I decided to book a beach holiday – our first for several years – and catch some winter sun.
We looked at hotels in Turkey and Greece, debating about how much money we wanted to spend. Since the travel bug has bitten, I was adamant that I wanted to visit somewhere new.
So we decided on Cape Verde.
A West African island nation, Cape Verde spans an archipelago on volcanic islands in the Atlantic Ocean, about 350 miles off the coast of Senegal. Formerly a Portuguese colony, the country has been independent since 1975.
We booked a trip to the island of Boa Vista, which has a population of only around 4,000 people.
It’s a beautiful island, with stunning beaches that are almost empty. You can often walk for miles and see only a few other tourists enjoying the stretches of sand and the crashing waves.
We stayed on the south coast of the island, where our hotel rose up against the sea like a walled town, with nothing else around it.
Boa Vista isn’t a particularly developed island: the airport is primarily open air and apparently the lack of landing lights means planes generally take off and land during daylight hours. Many of the roads are cobbled, which can make for a bumpy journey, but the local motto of ‘No stress’ applies.
This was one of the most relaxing breaks I’ve had for a long time and I’d definitely return to the island.