🇨🇻 In a break from the usual long-form written posts, these are voice-memo postcards from a month-long island hopping trip to Cabo Verde, travelling with three young kiddos✌🏻. You can catch Part 1 here 🇨🇻
Olà Restless Wonders,
Three weeks in and onto the third island - This voice-memo postcard comes to you from the Island of Sal. Famed for it’s salt lakes, laid back vibes and long stretches of golden sand.
We have some settling in to do… that’s clear!
I’ll let you listen on (or read the transcript below).
📸 Snaps from the family iPhone camera roll are at the bottom.
Enjoy and catch you for the (final!) instalment of the trip, next week.
Anna xx
P.S 👆🏻❤️ Tapping the heart icon at the top or bottom of the post means that more people will see this and you will also automatically be sent Cabo Verdan sunshine for doing it 🇨🇻☀️
A transcript of the voice memo…
Hello, Restless ones, Happy Thursday to you all, and hello from the island of Sal in Cabo Verde. Now a quick little recap for those of you who are tuning in for the first time. So me and my two year old twins and my four year old and my adventuresome other half, Jamie, we are on currently a month Island topping trip around Cabo Verde, and we're doing three islands.
We've done two islands. We've been on São Vicente. First of all, then we went to Santiago, to the capital city of Praia, and then this week, just a few days ago, we flew from Praia, and we've landed on the island of Sal and we are currently staying near Santa Maria, which is the main tourist town.
Change gives me a cheeky slap around the chops
When we got here I thought I was over this whole adjustment thing. But it always hits me, this feeling where I think, what have I done? We've made a mistake. We shouldn't be doing this. This is too difficult, and it's normally when we make a big change.
So that happened when we first arrived on Cabo Verde, then it happened again. We moved again. I thought, Nah, we're settled in now. We're fine. And then we got here and straight away the island flying in is so different -it’s flat and stark and there’s loads of beaches, and it's very popular with tourists.
Sal and Boa Vista, are the two islands that people come to when they want to escape the winter and just go to a beach, drink cocktails, this is where they come. So we saved it for the end because we thought, well, let's go and see what all that's about.
Let's take the pressure off ourselves. Let's go somewhere that's easier for kids. I have absolutely loved the last few islands, and we've got a real cultural fix from it, but the only thing that was missing is the kids don't have many other kids to play with.
So for this last section, we thought, let's do something for them. It's not really where we would tend to choose to come, necessarily. But we've decided, yeah, we'll do it for the kids.
And because we'd had to change our plans a month before flying to Cabo Verde (we were supposed to be going to Sri Lanka instead). And so I had to book everything really last minute. And there weren't many places left, basically. So we're in this enormous hotel that is out of the town.
And it just like loomed up out of the sand. And Jamie just both looked at one another. And because it's a bigger place. We thought, oh, it's gonna be really easy for the kids, but the kids went bananas, and the first day, they were just overwhelmed.
Honestly, within the first 24 hours, I thought we were gonna go home.
Mummy goes Maverick
I think it was a of a catalog of things that went on that contributed the first 24 hours being difficult. So I did a bit of a mummy Maverick move in that when you're traveling as a family of five, it's really difficult to say that you want all five of you to be in a room. First world problems, I know.
So I always just go, oh, there's only four of us. It's fine, just give us one room. And then when I get there, I go, Well, there's twins, like, just an extra baby cot or whatever. We've got our little baby tent that we take with us, so they'll just sleep in that. It's no problem, and it's normally, 95% of the time is not a problem.
But this hotel, we got here and they saw there were five of us, and they were trying to get us to have a meeting with the manager. They wanted to give us a whole extra room and charge us for it. And we said, but we're not going to use that room. We're all just going to pile in one room, because I'm not going to split my family up.
And they were saying, No one of you goes in that room. One adult goes in the other room, and we were just saying, No, we're not doing it. So that was a bit awkward, and we've dodged the meeting with the manager that we were supposed to go and have, so we're probably going to be in trouble somewhere along the line. There might be a knock at our door.
Rules, rules, rules
But then also that day, I discovered that there's just a lot more rules. Because it's a big hotel, I guess - I got told off for not wearing shoes in one place, and there's grass, but you're not allowed to run on it, and we just let the kids run on the grass, and I was supposed to be wearing a top in another place, and I was just in a towel. And anyway, just too many rules for my liking.
I'm all about the rules. I'm a bit of a rule upholder, but I'm all about the rules when it's about respect and kindness to other people, when there are just rules for the sake of rules, I just can't be doing with it.
So anyway, rough first 24 hours, and we were saying, Jamie asked me, asked me the question. He said, are our flights home movable? And I said, it's all movable. It's absolutely all movable. We can change our minds. If something's not for us, we'll leave.
Anyway, within 48 hours, we've now settled. And the balance has tipped.
Viveiro Botanical Gardens
And the other thing that's changed is we've just started getting out more. So I did a run. Ran into town, out of the cultural desert, and into the place where it's all happening and there's stuff going on. Loved it.
And then this afternoon, we went out to the Botanical Gardens, which is a botanical garden slash Zoo. Love that it's two things in one, and the flowers are just beautiful. And there's all these flowers that I've been seeing for three weeks and wondering what they are. And there it is telling me what they are on a little wooden post.
And I never realised how many different types of palm trees there are? Right? Every day's a school day, I just thought, nice Palm Tree, a palm tree is a palm tree, right? No. There are loads of different types of palm trees. So I'm enjoying playing spot the palm tree as we walk around and going: Oh, that's a blue palm, or that's a Christmas palm, or that's a Royal Palm. Loving it.
The Botanical Gardens is a place where they take in all the stray animals from the island as well. So they’ve got peacocks, goats, monkeys. All different kinds of parrots, loads of other birds, chickens, running around, roaming free.
Rocky was wetting himself laughing, chasing after these chickens. Storm was shouting, Cock a doodle doo, and he just was shouting Cock-a doo, doo, and laughing so hard running after all these chickens. So that was cracking me up.
And then Storm seemed to have some kind of deep affinity with donkeys. There were three donkeys, and it's so weird, you know, there is that thing with horses, and they can sense people's energy. But straight away, these donkeys just loved Storm. And she was unafraid of them. She's petting them. They're nuzzling up to her. That was really quite beautiful to see.
So we have forced things back into perspective, and actually we're settling into this. But it was just another lesson of… I always think I get used to being able to change, and that I am not what's the word, not above it, but that I am so used to change in my life, and especially when I bring change on myself, that I'm totally cool with it. But man, it just catches you off guard every single time, and it's an emotional whirlwind.
Nightly Mama-daughter dates
So, we're into a bit more of a groove now. And the other thing that's different on this island is the rooms are smaller, so we're all in this one tiny room. And that means that our sleep is a little bit more chaotic, because if one kid wakes up, everyone wakes up.
Last night was like twin bingo and then Stormy waking up, having dreams about dragons or whatever else as well at four o'clock in the morning. So our sleep's gone a little bit out of whack.
But on the flip side of us all being in one room is that each night, I have to take Storm out of the room while Jamie puts the twins to bed. I love that he's the one that puts the twins to bed. He has put the twins down for their nap and for their bedtime, for every nap and bedtime since we've been out there, he just got into this routine. He likes his routine.
It's just been really lovely that he does that, and I go and spend some time with Storm. And so in the evenings, what's happening is Jamie's staying in the room, putting the twins to sleep, and me and Storm, we wander out, and she's so excited because it's dark outside and there's loads of adults everywhere, and they're all drinking things and there’s people milling around, and there's loads of buzz going on, and she feels like she's out in the world late.
And it's, this is 6.30 at night. And then we go and we get a little hot chocolate together. And then we found this little place, because I didn't want to just sit in the bar with everyone else, so we wandered round, and we found this little… it's like a raised drain cover.
It's a raised drain cover off the path in this little sandy patch, and she sits with her toe in the sands, and I sit next to her, and I've got my Kindle, and I read her Mr. Stink by David Williams on the Kindle, as we have these two little hot chocolates together, and we just watch the twinkle of lights from the bar in the distance and the palm trees swaying above us. And it is just a beautiful little ritual that we’ve got going on at the moment.
So I will keep you updated. I think we've got 10 days left, so I'm determined to get out and explore a bit more and just really explore what’s going on beyond these four walls and and get myself out on some runs.
I've got to get some nappies for the twins tomorrow. So I need to go on a mission-run to the supermarket at lunchtime anyway, in the sweaty heat. So I'm really looking forward to that.
Next week, I'll have a few more updates on what this island of Sal is all about. Okey dokey Ta Ra, for now, I will catch you next week. Take care. Bye.
