Cabo da Praia

Our house was located at the top of a hill (seems to be a trend here!) about 1 km from Cabo, with a population of about 700. We had to walk to Cabo to catch the bus. I was always nervous to walk along the main road as the cars drove fast. It also seemed that almost every home had a large, vicious looking dog, some chained and some free. I learned to cross the road to avoid their frightening barking. The village also had free wifi and on our last two days I walked to town and sat on a bench to work on my blog. One day I made a new friend....a 9 year old boy who was sitting on his trike in the middle of the road facing on-coming traffic. The cars were just driving around him! I waved him over and I tried to have a conversation but he spoke no English. So I showed him photos on my iPad, which he was very interested in. When he left at least he didn’t return to the roadway. I felt sad for him.

We had very good weather all week. Drizzled one day for about 5 minutes and it rained at night. It was 15-21 during the day with calm winds and 11-14 at night. Most days were partly sunny/cloudy. We dressed appropriately and were never cold. Now inside the house was another story. We estimated that the house temperature was at least 5 degrees colder than outside. Add the humidity and it was bone-chilling cold every evening. I would wrap myself in a lightweight, stuff-able down blanket I had brought with me just in case. With no TV (it stopped working on day 4) and no internet, we found our focus was on keeping warm. Actually the only time we were warm inside the house was when we were in bed, covered in multiple blankets. When I got up in the morning around 8 I would open the screened back door to let the warmth in. Mateus explained that none of their houses have heating but just every day cooking warms the house to about 18 degrees. Our home had been closed up for 6 months.

I was warned by the owner that I may encounter the occasional cockroach, mouse or rat. I was so relieved that the only things I had to kill in the morning were 4 slugs and 1 cricket. We had to refrigerate all our food because of the high humidity in the house. For the first few days there was a very strong mildew smell. The humidity inside was so high that our towels never dried so I would hang them on the clothesline outside. It was so humid that it dissolved my vitamin pill, even though I had it in a sealed plastic container. In the evenings I made John the herbal tea that had been left for us. It wasn’t until the 4th evening that I discovered the tea inside the gauze pouches was full of mold! It’s a good thing that John doesn’t get too worried about things like that.

On the positive side, every morning Mateus would be in the back yard working in his garden and would supply us with all the lettuce and cabbage that we wanted. I like the experience of staying in a community to see how the locals live day-to-day. If we hadn’t rented this house we never would have met Mateus, Lucinda and Marc who took us under their wings and treated us like family. . At $30 per night, the rental price was definitely a bonus. Would I stay there again? No thank you!Read more