Santo Antao Trip

The latest meeting of the hiking crew was over in Santo Antao during the 5th of July, Independence Day weekend. As you may recall, Cape Verde gained its independence from Portugal on July 5, 1975. In celebration, we went hiking. This time we went to Lajedos, which is just a few kilometers outside of the port city, so we didn't have to spend much time in cars! We spent Saturday hiking around the city and through the mango groves. We hiked over to the house of Baltasar Lopes. He was a famous Cape Verdean author. He lived in Santo Antao for a period of his life and was inspired by his surroundings. His house sits high on a lonely hill overlooking the valley and ocean below. Its a great view.

On Sunday, we headed down to the "mine." Well, it's really just a tunnel that carries water from its ground source in Ribera das Patas (a few miles north). But, it's a really long tunnel. We walked for about 40 minutes in the tunnel. Along the way, there are large tunnels heading out into the valley. We headed out one of these exits, you can see it in the picture above. It's pretty far up the valley wall, so we had to scale the wall to get out into the valley and then we hiked up the valley to the next town. After that, we had to hike up the mountain and onto the main road and walked back down, picking mangoes along the way! It was a great, very nice, very relaxing trip. We really enjoyed it.

So, enjoy the pictures.