Remote Fogo Island

The urge to go to Fogo island beat the urge to stay on the beach on Santo Antao.

It was a 3 and a half hour, fairly calm fast ferry from Praia on Santiago Island to Sao Felipe on Fogo. Two young men from Finland joined me in the taxi to the place that I had booked, as they needed a room, too. We arrived at a very dark Residencial Girassol. The nice taxi driver tried calling but there was no response. It was 8:30 pm and we were hungry so Mr. Taxi directed us up the hill to a restaurant. Half a block uphill, we stopped to chat with a group of men sitting in a circle outside a mini-Mercado.  One of them called the owner of the residencial and all was solved. They pulled up chairs for us and we had a beer with them while we waited for the guesthouse person to arrive.

The next morning, the min-bus, called the collectivo, to Portela in Cha das Caldeiras picked me up at 11 and made the rounds picking up other people until it was full of locals and tourists. We made stops on the way, dropping people or things off and picking up new people. People would pile out, pass the baby to be held by someone, take something out, everyone would pile back in and we carried on. The drive would toot his horn and wave to say hello to everyone we passed. It’s a small island.

We stopped for photos at the entry to Pico do Fogo National Park, the first sight of the lava that in the 2014 eruption flowed for 2 weeks towards the town of Portela, until it eventually buried 95% of it. We were entering the giant caldera formed from a volcano thousands of years ago.

At first sight, the Cha (the caldera) and the town of Portela look desolate and barren with the feel of an almost abandoned mining town. And it felt like walking on graves, knowing that below the current buildings were their original homes. Thanks to the 2 weeks that it took for the lava to reach them, no one died. But most people lost everything.

After checking in to my guesthouse and chatting with Rose, co-owner with his wife of Ciza e Rose, I went for a walk and met up with 2 of the people who had been on the collectivo.

We walked the forest trail, where the trees were buttressed against the cliffs of the caldera, and on the other side of the trail was endless lava. Since it was going to get dark, we turned back after an hour. We had no idea that had we gone just a little farther, we would have seen a completely different landscape, the agricultural area on the way to Mosteiros.

We stopped in at Casa Ramiro where I was introduced to Manecom, the homemade red wine for which the area is famous. Every resident makes their own at home, and some like Casa Ramiro also sell it. They have both sec (dry) and doce (sweet.) 

Over the next two days, I hiked with 3 wonderful French people, one of whom is also a Cape Verdean and has been coming to Fogo for 24 years. He was like a colour commentator. Literally. He pointed out and named plants, helping me see green where previously I just saw black. And through him, the vineyards became visible. Not vineyards like I have ever seen before, but suddenly, they were all over the place (except on the hardened lava flow), some vines just sprouting out their new leaves.

And there were beans, manioc, apple, mango, herbs, sweet potatoes, peppers. It made me feel better for the people living there, knowing that they had access to fresh produce. 

People told me that before, Portela was very beautiful and had everything. The way people describe it, it was like the land of plenty, a paradise – such a sharp contrast to the dark landscape now.

Yet it was their life before in that paradise that made people start to return in 2016, to rebuild their lives in a place they love. They were unable to live elsewhere, they had to come back.

With each walk and each conversation, the place grows on you. Most tourists miss that because they come one day to hike to the top of Pico do Fogo, the large, inactive peak, and then leave, without feeling that sense of hope and survival. 

After 3 nights, I returned to Sao Felipe with the collectivo that picked me up at 7 am.  And there I was, sharing a bus with singing children!  Once I learned some lyrics, I sang along with them, which delighted them to no end – definitely not my singing, just that I sang with them!  If only all Monday mornings were like that!