... I like to walk around and "feel" the village atmosphere ... with its smells, sounds ... specks of colour ... here and there ... in the middle of the unfinished concrete houses, ... the people ... those I have already met and those, whom I have seen a few times before but whose daily activities don't facilitate the conversation ...
I often try to put myself into these people's shoes and wonder what it is like to have to get up very early every morning to face the daily difficulties of an ongoing sequence of gestures ... in which they are commonly "helped" by their children ... the many children one stumbles onto in almost every corner ...
Children, who always seem to greet us with a smile ...
Children playing (Left) in Calhetona (Right).
Meat vendors preparing the pork meat to be sold (Left). Washing clothes in a bucket and puting them out to dry on top of a pile of stones. (Right) Local pigsties, which are sometimes "located" on the roof of the houses.
The long awaited trip to Praia Baixo beach, one of the nicest beaches on the eastern coast of Santiago island had to be cancelled, as Sibylle was taken ill with flu, so Gherard, Beat and myself decided to head towards the Southwestern areas of the island.
As we drove off Calheta, the weather started getting worse and we soon found ourselves under heavy rain. To be able to climb up a small hill to photograph a huge treee in Poilão I had to get my sandals off and walk up barefoot, holding myself firmly to the shrubbery. Walking down proved to be even harder as I simply slid down the muddy hill.
Picos landscapes showing the often dry brownish colour turned into green, following the early
September rainfall
.
. As we reached Jalelo Ramos, a transportation van was blocking the road access. We were told we would have to wait for something like two hours until they had substituted the wheel, once they didn't have a spare tyre. I then started talking to two young girls, whilst Beat had gone off to buy some biscuits and water from a local peasant and Gherard assessed the situation regarding the "inoperative" vehicle.
A group of local men then decided to lift the vehicle and move it to one side of the road to allow our van to drive down. We were soon on our way towards Rebelo de Baixo, to unexpectedly find out that the road had been cut off because of having been flooded ... so we had to head back up the hill with the aggravated problem of having had to collect a few heavy stones and have Beat sit on the back part of the van, in order to balance it in our climb up the hills.
(The photos underneath illustrate the sequence of events)
Beat sitting on the back of the vanIt took us another two hours to get back to where we had started and by the time we reached "home" we were tired ... wet ... but happy ...
What an adventure!!!...
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