I Got 29 Ways

If that song title is unfamiliar, then here are 3 facts about it: It is an awesome bluesy song written by Willie Dixon in 1956; it was covered by Marc Cohn on his 1991 debut album, the same album containing our wedding song "True Companion"; and I clearly remember listening to this album on our wedding day, thinking "I'm going to play this '29 Ways' song on our 29th wedding anniversary."

Holy shit...that day is today. And how does one celebrate 29 years of marriage? While I'm sure you know that the 25th and 50th anniversaries are commemorated with silver and gold respectively, I'll bet you didn't know that the 29th is observed by "waiting in an African airport."

Or is that just us?

We arrived to the Sal Island airport at 12pm for our 3pm flight to Santiago Island. This seems early because Cabo Verde Airlines doesn't have an online check-in process- it's more "show up before your flight and convince us to put you on this raggedy-ass plane." So our patience was eventually rewarded with boarding passes, and then we were ushered into what I can only describe as a "holding pen" for two hours. We took off just thirty minutes late (or as our guesthouse owner calls it, "on time"), but just 45 minutes later we were landing in Praia, on Santiago Island.

Santiago Island is the most-populated island in Cabo Verde; half of Cabo Verde's 500,000 people live on this island, and Praia is the nation's capital. Fun nerd fact: Praia was Charles Darwin's first stop on the HMS Beagle expedition, when he proposed the theory of evolution.

Santiago's city atmosphere is quite different than Sal's "island holiday" vibe. Santiago is a bit more grimy, has far more people, and contains a Portuguese colonial Old Town. Its beaches contain black volcanic sand instead of the white sugar sand of Sal. We've rented an AirBnB in a local family's home on the beach; and on one side is the ocean, and on the other is nonstop traffic. It's a bit jarring after Sal's remoteness.

To celebrate our wedding anniversary, in the evening we walked into Old Town, known as "The Plateau." It's so named because it sits on a high volcanic plateau above the rest of Praia, accessible by (ugh) staircases leading up to the Old Town. We had been told that no visit to Cabo Verde is complete without a night at Quintal da Música in Old Town; Cabo Verde has its own music genres, including Morna (like tango) and Funaná (accordion-based), and Quintal da Música is famous for its nightly musical performances and Cabo Verdean food. We sat in the garden and ordered cachupa (Cape Verdean bean stew) and local fish, while listening to Morna music that to me, sounds oddly like a Vegas lounge act. And we toasted our anniversary with coconut grogue liqueur and bananas flambéed in grogue.

A bit before midnight, we had coffees at an outdoor café near Quintal da Música; like most restaurants on the Plateau's nightlife street, the café was hosting live music. We listened to a band playing Cabo Verdean standards that had all the waiters and locals singing along word-for-word. It was a glimpse into local life, a moment that's become quite rare in this era of mass tourism.

After our late-night coffees, we hailed a taxi and headed back to our Airbnb. Happy 29th to us.Meer informatie