Up early for a day trip to the neighboring Santo Antão island nicknamed ‘Ilha das montanhas’ (island of the mountains). It was blowing pretty hard as the 7am ferry picked its way across the channel between the islands. It was a local ferry, nothing fancy, but it was full of color and inter island commerce. Surprisingly a lot of the locals were getting sea sick, which was counterintuitive as they must have made the short passage many many times before.

The first thing to notice was how steep and green the hills were especially on the north and west. Very narrow roads traversed numerous ridges past old cinder cones to a huge crater at the top.

Cash crops we drove by included sugar cane, yams, sweet potato, and cassava.

There was so much cane tucked away amongst the numerous terraced hills that a distillery has prospered making good use of it. We visited it before hiking up the hill for a vegetarian lunch, and the favorite spirits we sampled were hibiscus and passion fruit so I bought a bottle of each for the crew to try later.

A quick trip back along the coast to the return ferry with a short hike to a lighthouse completed our days excursion.

A good day out.