Wildlife - and temporary farewell

Sunday 30th November 2008, day 134. 16° 45’.16 N, 022° 58’.77 W. Palmeira, Sal, Cape Verde

Describing the Cape Verdes would take a book! We have been to five islands in the group: São Vicente, Santo Antão, the westernmost, then going east, to the uninhabited Santa Luzia, São Nicolau, and now we are on Sal, the most north easterly, waiting for our new crew to arrive and the previous one to depart. I must try to pull all the impressions of the islands together to make something coherent; at the minute it is just a jumble of the harsh country, hard-working people, bright sunlight, and jolting on cobbled roads up and down mountain ridges in shared minibus taxis, through scant fields of maize, taciturn goats, and great webs of spiders strung between the telegraph poles.

Something easier to describe is the wildlife we’ve seen since leaving the Canaries – because there hasn’t been a lot of it. What there has been, though, has more than made up for the scarcity.

To start with – a turtle, all by himself, quietly plodding his way across our wake, when we were half way between the Canaries and Cape Verdes. He was the only one we’ve seen, so it is hard – though foolish – not to imagine him being the sole representative of his species in these waters.

Then, two days out from the Canaries, we were startled by a loud bang in the middle of the night. It was a flying fish, hurling himself from a predator’s jaws straight onto our spray-hood. He was stunned, but we chucked him back in, and hope he escaped. From then on, we have been “catching” a couple every night, usually a few inches long, but we hope to get a decent sized one soon, so we can report on the texture and flavour. They are quite amazing to watch during the day. I had assumed that their flight was just really a long leap out of the water, but no. They fly low over the waves, like a silver skimmed stone, and can easily cover 100 yards, not just flying in a straight line, but banking and curving to choose the safest spot to land. If they time it right they will just catch a wave with their tail, and give a quick flick, to get a boost of speed and a few more yards of flight. On deck, they are about 6 inches long, and mackerel shaped, silver, with blackish fins / wings and tail.

We think of them flying to escape larger fish, but another predator is a local type of gannet, which has perfected the art of flying alongside boats to pick up any flying fish put up by them. The fish leaves the water, the gannet soars after it, matching the fish turn for turn, until the fish re-enters the water, when the gannet will dive. We assume the fish slows on re-entry, which gives the bird a chance to catch it.

I met more wildlife in a clothes shop in Mindelo; I picked out a rather jazzy pair of navy and white striped trousers, and was just admiring the opulent three-dimensional embroidery of a black and gold striped spider covering the back pocket when – it moved. My first thought was to hand the trousers to the owner of the shop – it was, after all, her spider – but she seemed oddly reluctant to take them. We froze briefly, me holding the hanger by my fingertips, at full arm’s length, until she decided it gave a bad impression to customers if she appeared frightened of her stock, and took it gingerly, whereupon the spider leapt to the ground, we all shrieked, and it whizzed into the nearest dark corner, beside what had been a rather tempting pair of red patent shoes. She offered to take any garment we were interested in from the rack herself, and shake it before handing it to us, but somehow the glamour had gone out of the shopping expedition.

These islands seem to be a good environment for spiders; up in the hills, one sees giant webs strung between the telegraph poles, inhabited by up to a hundred of them, all at least an inch across the body. The effect is quite eerie. This may explain the slightly neurotic behaviour of the local flies. We speculated briefly that a spider web like that could be an excellent, eco-friendly alternative to a mosquito net, but on second thoughts decided not.

Now, in Palmeira, a fish eagle is hovering over the boat, and has just emerged from a dive with a decent-sized fish clutched in its talons.

And finally, with roll of drums and a fanfare of trumpets, there are … the fish that we’ve caught ourselves! So far, we’ve had three, one almost certainly a bonito, the other two less easy to identify, but all good eating, the bonito sweet and tender. It turns out, for us novices, that catching the fish is just the first part of the problem. We gaff them fairly easily, then put on gardening gloves against the spines, hold them down on a beech-wood block, and Anthony administers the winch handle. Sometimes the fish have co-operated. Anthony is dead chuffed that his brand new shorts have spatters of fish blood on them; it makes him feel like a primæval hero.

Thursday 4th December
We are now back in Mindelo, have reprovisioned, taken on water, got the next week's weather forecast, all had a good night's sleep, and are about to head west for 2,100 miles. Will be back in touch on the other side.

Just in case we don't get there in time, Happy Christmas!