A beach vacation in Cape Vert!

Hello!

Today’s post, as you can tell by the title, will be about our stay in Sal, in Cape Vert.

In 2018, me and Sebastian were looking forward to a quiet holiday. We have been visiting cities non-stop since we had been together, and although we love to visit new places, city-tourism can be quite exhausting and we just wanted to chill this time.

We decided to go to Cape Vert and after some searching and talking to our friends, we decided to visit the island Sal (we were choosing between Sal and Boa Vista, however I was told that Sal had a bit more life to it).

We bought our flights in April to go in June, and we paid around 330 EUR for each person, round-trip. We flew with Cabo Verde airlines and I have to say I was quite impressed with the plane! I had never heard about it before, and although they do some pretty long flights, Lisbon to Sal is about a 4h30 flight, so I was not expecting such a good plane. It had a nice TV with a variety of movies, super spacious and we had a pretty good meal.

We landed in Santa Maria at night, and it was super windy! I have to say I was not expecting that, however we were told by locals that Sal can be quite windy, and the best time to go there would be at the end of summer (from August to October). I guess I missed the memo, but it was ok.

We stayed at an Airbnb that is linked here. We paid 320 EUR for an entire apartment that is inside a hotel, for 7 nights, two people. The apartment was not only super clean, it was across the street from the beach and it had a swimming pool you could use. The only downside we found was that it was missing WiFi, however this was not a huge issue for us as we had our own data and were able to find a few restaurants with WiFi.

Although this Airbnb was amazing, I would not stay there again if I went back to Sal, just due to the fact that it was still a good walk away from the coolest part of town - the nicest beaches, restaurants and so on. It was within walking distance, so it was not a big deal, however I think we could have done better.

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What we did

Since we were looking for a beach vacation, we stayed at the beach most of our days. However, we are curious people and always enjoy finding new places, so we went to a few cool spots.

When we were planning on going to the beach, we stayed mainly at a beach near a hotel called Porto Antigo, since the water was super clear, it was not busy at all and we could easily walk to some restaurants nearby.

Another beach we visited was Ponta Preta, which is a 5 minute drive from Santa Maria. This is a massive beach area that looks like it is famous for kitesurfing, so it can be a bit windy. However, on a good day, this is amazing, has tons of space and the water is super clear.

We hired a taxi for a full day to make some stops along the island. We visited the Buracona (also known as the blue eye), which is a bay located about 30 minutes by car from Santa Maria. Here you can find a natural hole in the coast, where the sun shines directly and creates a deep blue to the visitors´eye, and this is why it is called blue eye. Besides taking a look at the blue eye, you can also swim in the natural pool the bay creates and enjoy some sun.

The island is quite small, so on that same day we visited the Salinas de Pedra de Lume, which is a place full of salt ponds. This is a fun place to visit since the ponds have a pinkie tone and you are allowed to swim in them.

We also took the chance to visit another city on the island called Palmeira. While Santa Maria is the most touristic part of the island Sal, Palmeira is home to their main port, so you can see a lot of fishing boats and merchants exchanging business. There’s a lot of fish going around this small town.

Our favorite activity during this holiday was to go scuba diving. We both had experience before, however I had only dove once, so we booked two dives with the Santa Maria Dive Center. We started with a small dive in Murdeira, which is a bay with really calm waters just above Santa Maria. On the next day, we dove in and around a sunken boat. This is the place we saw most biodiversity underwater: puffer fish, spider crabs and no many more we haven’t seen anywhere else! One important lesson we learned on this dive: GoPro’s on and off buttons might stop working with the water pressure when you’re already too deep, so start recording while at the surface. Because of this, we weren’t able to record our dive and don’t have any footage of this incredible experience (sad emoji).

Another thing we always look for during our trips are handmade souvenirs. We found a small store right in the center of Santa Maria called Djunta Mo Art, which is a store that sells handmade stuff created by a lot of different artisans around Cape Vert. Along with the souvenirs, they offer some information about the artist who made what you are buying, which is one of the coolest things we saw there.

In one of the evenings we spent in town, we decided to visit the Hilton hotel. During some evenings, they have live music, and we were lucky enough to listen to traditional Cape Vert songs by a local artist, while we enjoyed some warm tea by the swimming pool.

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How we moved around

We mostly went places walking. If you’re staying in Santa Maria, everything is within walking distance, and the streets are not very busy and are easy to follow.

We only moved by car when we got a taxi from and to the airport, which cost about 20 EUR each way. We also agreed with a very nice taxi driver to stay with us a whole morning and afternoon when we visited places that were a bit further away, and he charged us a total of 50 EUR to go to Ponta Preta, Buracona and Salinas de Pedra Lume.

We saw some bike and scooter rental places around Santa Maria, and this would have been a nice option if we were planning on moving around for more days. There was one place right next to our hotel called Kite Verde that rented these, plus kite surfing and other water sports material.

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Where we ate

We got the chance to eat in a few different places around Santa Maria. The first one we visited was a restaurant on the beach named Angulo. We went there on the night we arrived since it was close to our hotel, had WiFi (as Sebastian had to work) and served food late. However, I have to say we were not very impressed by this place, we had some pizzas that weren't so great.

We had breakfast almost everyday at a place called Columbus, also right in front of our Airbnb. This is one of the places we liked the most since they served a buffet with some variety of food, like eggs and bacon, natural juices, fruit, bread and so on. We paid around 8 EUR for the buffet. We also had lunch there a few times and it was also super nice! They are kind of an Italian restaurant, so I wouldn’t describe it as local cuisine, but the quality was really good.

Our favorite place to have dinner in Santa Maria was a restaurant named Sabores e Livros. The space was lovely and the restaurant owner was very nice to us (she was also Portuguese so we think she liked us even more due to this). We especially loved the tuna tataki - tuna is a fish that is served a lot around the island and this was one of the best we’ve ever had!

On one of our last days in Santa Maria, we had breakfast at a cafe named Cape Fruit. I think I even liked this one better than Columbus due to the fact that the food was a bit more my style: fresh fruit, pancakes, juices, cakes… Everything looked delicious! The space is also very colorful and the vibe is super chill.

If I had to recommend any place in particular, I would recommend Cape Fruit for breakfast and Sabores e Livros for lunch or dinner, they are very worth the try!

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Overall, I think we went to Sal at a bad time: it was June, many of the days were too windy to enjoy the beach and we even caught some cloudy days during our stay. However, my general opinion is that, if you are able to get one week there with amazing weather, this is one of the best places we visited for some beach holidays! I would very much recommend scuba diving if this is the type of activity you enjoy doing.

The next time we go to Cape Vert, I really want to visit the island Boa Vista as I have also heard great things about it!