This is an authorized adaptation in English of a post in French by 
: LA LONGUE ROUTE DE MAESHA • San Antao
As my primary language is not English, there are probably some mistakes in this post.
All photographs by
MAESHA'S LONG ROAD
CABO VERDE
-A LITTLE "VERDE"-
After several months on the island of Sal in Cabo Verde, Marc Allaria on his sailboat Maesha sailed to the islands of São Vicente and Santo Antão.
Most of the islands of Cabo Verde are very dry. Desert scenery and stony relief forming part of most landscapes. And then the island of Santo Antão presented itself to Maesha's bow. It is taller and larger than the other islands and it is often covered with a cloudy mantle that develops quite quickly in one direction or the other. In other words, it has a mountain climate.
Water!
Countries that suffer from drought are often those exposed to heavy rains during periods of depressions. The rainy season may be very short here, but the passage of the last depressions has discharged enough water to create some local catastrophes. Lots of water, almost too much, but nobody complains and especially not Nature!
Typical houses
Finally a green island! After two years spent between the Maghreb summer, Madeira, and Cabo Verde, chlorophyll start to become the subject of past legends! But here, goats delight in the green grass found on the leeward slopes. One of the island's specialties is goat cheese. The windward coasts allow channeling layers of humid air creating with the updrafts of the local rains and vegetation presenting all the nuances existing between the tropical abundance and the coniferous forest.
Donkeys eating grass
Once the scene has been set, all you have to do is put on an old pair of shoes and set off to climb a mountain with incredible slopes. Circuses, craters, cliffs, isolated rivers, Nature grows here in the direction that pleases her without Man forcing her to limit herself in her plans for development.
The local roads here are thought out with so much brio and carried out with so much inhumanity. A colossal work of stone cutting, transport, assembly under conditions that only colonialism can impose.
The walks are superb, you can fill your water bottle at each source, the inhabitants are unimaginably kind, and the day ends as often here in the current of a river.
