See the previous articles in this series: Part I – Wishing You a Green Christmas and Part II – Confessions of a Vegetarian. People are funny about meat eating. Six year olds are not the only ones to find the sight of a pig’s head upsetting, and yet those same people who cry, “Yuk! how could they do that?” will happily tuck into pork pie. Just recently I was shopping with a French friend in a Brazilian market when we came upon a…
Recent Articles in Scrapbook
A miscellany of chit-chat, quizzes, and articles about the places we have visitedSee the previous article in this series: Part I – Wishing You a Green Christmas, and the next article: Part III – Killers with a Conscience. I’ve never much liked meat. As a child I used to find it tough and chewy. Pork sausages smelled nice but they were full of nasty gristly bits, and bacon was only edible if the fat had been fried to a crisp. Chicken was fine provided I got the breast; I wasn’t keen on gnawing a bone.…
As I write, Mollymawk is anchored off the little scenic town of Paraty, (just down from Rio de Janeiro) but on the festive day we will probably be at sea, making our way down the coast towards Uruguay. As you sit there, tucking into your turkey, we might be lazing along in the sunshine and having a lovely time… but on the other hand we might be slamming into a south-easterly gale with waves smashing into the topsides and sweeping…
Inasmuch as it consists of just a few fragments of rock, flung far away from the continent and strewn across almost two hundred miles of ocean, the Republic of Cape Verde is superficially similar to the Canaries or the Azores; but in reality, geographic structure and a similar sort of lingo are pretty much the only things that this archipelago holds in common with those other two places.
Las Palmas, political capital of the Canary Islands, has been nominated as Europe’s Cultural Capital for the year 2016. Well… I don’t know what a city has to do to qualify for this role, but I would have thought that it might involve having a bit of… well, you know… a bit of culture, and all that… European cultural centres which spring to mind include Rome, Athens, Venice, London, Lisbon, Edinburgh, Paris, Avignon, Seville, Toledo, Santiago de Compostela, Cadiz, Granada;…
The sea shone tantalizingly, down below us, looking as flat and polished as a mirror, but high up above it we were being buffeted by a strong wind. We were sitting on the summit of Monte Leon, which is a little hill on the coast of Sal. Down in the bay below ten or fifteen kitesurfers zoomed to and thro, making the best of the wind. Unlike the windsurfers they didn’t need a wind low down, their kites went up…
Much as we enjoy gawping at the super-yachts and at the Big Stuff going about its daily business on the other side of the port, for us the best thing about Las Palmas is the other cruising folk. As I said at the outset of the previous article, hundreds of yachts pass through the port each year and amongst this little lot there are bound to be friends, old or new. Usually it is the boats themselves which attract our…
You meet some nice people cruising. Nice people, and interesting boats. A few months ago we happened upon a multi-national team of English, Indonesian, and South African nationals who were sailing a Phoenician ship around Africa. And then we ran into a bunch of really crazy guys who were just about to set off across the ocean on a plastic raft. One of the best places to see a wide variety of interesting boats is Las Palmas, Gran Canaria. The…
The following article was penned by Adam Ziv, a young Israeli musician who hitched a ride with us for the passage from La Gomera to the Cape Verdes. We always said that we would never take hitch-hikers – but Adam was… Well, he was different. Without exerting any effort at all this young man charmed his way into our lives, so that we actually WANTED to take him sailing! I can’t pretend that it isn’t also quite nice to have…
Crew available. Hi there! My name is Ninja. I’m 23 years old and I want to sail to the Caribbean. I’ve already walked across Europe! I’m a vegetarian. Expert juggler. No sailing experience yet, but I’m very enthusiastic. Willing to work my passage. So read the advert on the notice board in Las Palmas. It was one of about 30 similar ads – some nicely printed on an A4 page; some scrawled in biro on a scrap of paper –…
sign up for email notifications
subscribe to our RSS feed
Twitter
Facebook
Google+