Fotos

This is the beach of Ribeira Grande on Santo Antao island, Cabo Verde. It is actually a beautiful beach with black pebbles, sometimes the size of footballs, a long beach line and huge waves. All this surrounded by the capital of Santo Antao, the city of Ribeira Grande.

Like all settlements on Santo Antao, there are canals, where the rain water can flow into the sea during the short but heavy rainfalls in late summer. Unfortunately, they are also used as waste dumps, because when it rains, it will all be flushed into the sea. When we arrived at RB, the air was thick of smoke and you could feel the burning waste stinging in your eyes and lungs. Tires, plastic waste, everything was spread there and some of it was burning, really spoiling this wonderful beach. The rain that started was quite a relief, because it extinguished some of the fires and you could start to breathe again. There are good reasons to not walk barefoot on this beach unless your feet can tolerate glass scrap :-)