The Cape Verde islands are just off the West African coast and one hour behind GMT which seemed odd but when I refreshed my geography I realised that the west of Africa is due south of the Greenwich and we were west of that so it made perfect sense!
Sal, one of the islands, is a large piece of volcanic rock with undulations, which we found when we hired bikes for a day, and a constant wind which is great for the wind and kite surfers and good training when you are riding a bike into it. While we there were the wind was a consistent 18-20 mph northerly. Our 45km ride to Palmeria, the port on the west coast, and back was tough going but easy, apart from two long climbs, back. The young man who hired us the bikes was amazed at our conquest and said we must be fit......which made us feel good!. John did push his bike up a couple of hills but he did very well and I was proud of him - the coffee and ice cream we had in Palmeria - in a lovely new coffee shop we found - were most welcome and memorably very good.
The rest of the holiday consisted of sun, but no more than two hours per day, sea, we always sunbathed on the beach as the pool was usually blasting out loud music which we found inconsistent with relaxing, and walking into Santa Maria a good 6-7 mile round trip, topped off with reading and puzzles for John and reading and going to the gym for me.
We liked self catering, we had booked this trip using our timeshare, which meant we did what we wanted when we wanted and importantly ate what we wanted. We however realised that these holidays are our least favourite - wildlife or walking and preferably combined are our firm favourites.
Cape Verde is linked with Portugal but still retains its own currency the Cape Verde Escudo although you can use euros extensively. It is built on tourism with lots of construction, much of which is stalled, going on. Package operators Tui and Thompson regularly ferry people in and out via charter flights....many looked painfully pink and were partaking fully in the the fully inclusive side of the resort. This for us was the downside as there was nowhere to buy snacks unless you purchased an expensive element of the inclusive package ( the developers saw this as a bonus - for us it looked a rip off so we did our own thing and it worked well.) We also did our own flights and went via Lisbon with TAP -preferable for us as we avoided the package tourist cavalcade!
Overall a nice break, I definitely got fitter, and it allowed us to thaw out after some really cold weather back home but we won't be going back - ( been there done that and avoided the T-shirt!)