5 April 1986: Ilha do Sal & a conversation with my South African seatmate
Saturday morning, April 5, 1986, 8:00AM Cape Verde Time,
4:00AM (Eastern Daylight time)
Following take off from Sal International Airport, Cape Verde
Islands
We arrived in the Cape
Verde Islands around dawn. Ilha do Sal (Portuguese
for Salt Island) is a virtually treeless desert island, mostly flat with a
scattering of 1000-foot volcanoes here and there. We had a one-hour layover for crew change and
refueling. Passengers could disembark
for a stroll around the terminal which was as barren as the island but clean
and modern by Third-World standards which is assuredly where the Cape Verdes
fit. Pretty but serious-looking young creole
women (descended from early Portuguese settlers and African slaves) handed us
transit passes as we exited our big bird.
We were required to remain inside the terminal which included a
duty-free shop (320 escudos or US$4.00 for a carton of ciggies, 600 escudos or
$7.60 for a liter of Cutty Sark). One
could purchase coffee in the restaurante
for 50¢ US. There was an open courtyard which
measured about 30 by 60 feet – no flowers or plants, only gravel. As one of the passengers commented, “This
must be where they exercise the prisoners.”
In fairness to the Cape Verdeans, one of my guidebooks notes that they have been suffering from terrible drought off and on for several hundred years. When we took off it appeared that the island was less than 100 square miles in area. Except for a few scattered towns, it seemed largely uninhabited, with dry arroyos radiating from the volcanoes. The coastline appeared quite rugged. My guidebook explains that the Cape Verdes are quite varied, one from the other, and apparently some are more interesting than Sal.
When I first learned that SAA stopped here, I asked if my return flight could include a stop-over. There is local air service to most of the other islands. The major stumbling block seemed to be a visa. I could have obtained one through the Cape Verdean embassy in Washington, D.C., but it would have only been good for 60 days. Since there is no Cape Verdean diplomatic mission in any of the countries I plan to visit (unless I should happen to get to Angola), I would have to send my passport to Washington or the Cape Verdes from South Africa a couple months before I return to New York. Surrendering my passport while in the RSA doesn’t seem like a great idea. I could have gotten my visa and stopped here for a few days on my way TO South Africa, but I was anxious to get there and didn’t want to start my trip off with a case of the Third World stomach crud which I might have picked up here. Besides, the damn South African consulate in New York held on to my passport until last week anyway. I was lucky to get it back in time to get my Zambian visa two days ago in New York.
The white South Afrian chap seated next to me elected to remain on board during our layover. He flies back and forth between the States and South Africa regularly and said he hadn't gotten off here for several years. Seems he had memories of being locked inside the terminal by machine-gun toting soldiers with nothing to drink but $4 cokes. Today, I only saw four soldiers (three in a truck and one unarmed) and they remained fairly inconspicuous. Not as exciting as I had hoped for.
A few words about this South African fellow while he’s taking a snooze. He’s been very friendly. We had a long chat last night about South African politics and the dilemmas faced by the government. He feels that change is inevitable, anticipating that, for example, the Group Areas Act, which requires the various racial groups to live in segregated communities, will be dropped by the end of the year. He attends the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg and also works in the cosmetic business dealing with the black market, as he described it. This prompted me to ask whether he meant illegal cosmetics or cosmetics for black people. It turned out to be the latter, and we got a good laugh out of the double entendre. He also said he would put me in touch with a hiking group at Wits.
Some slightly bad financial news for me. The Star lists the current exchange rate as 1.00 South African Rand = US $0.46. The currency guide in my stamp collectors’ newsletter has been listing it as about R1 = $0.36. My seat companion explains that the U.S. and European banks discount the rand which explains the differences. So I could have done much better changing dollars for rands at Deak-Perera in the U.S. than I will do at a South African bank. However, one is limited to bringing only R200 into the country (legally). The good news is that South Africans are very eager to change rands for dollars, so I may be able to do well in the black (in this case, illegal) market. My seat mate suggests caution.
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