Saturday, September 2, 2017

Shameless Photos of Happy Bertie

Bringing Cabo Verde up to date, these are the last photos we've taken lately. They mostly just show Bertie playing and being happy; I think our nightly perusal of Calvin and Hobbes is starting to have an impact on my feelings about summer! School starts on September 4, so it's nearly done....

We have a double obsession right now: between Bob the Builder (and his machine friends!) and dinosaurs, it would be hard to say which we like better. So, in brilliant and timeless joy, we have Bob the Builder dig for dinosaur bones. Usually Bertie sings the Bob the Builder theme song over and over while he's playing like this.

"Mama, this is the shovel for snow." And he doesn't let that stop him from using it in the dirt!

Scoop (from Bob the Builder) and the recently named Packer (from Nick, Kara, and Owen!) work hard on moving dirt around.

And the marvelous big yellow dump truck (Rubble) figures big in these games too.

We actually had Tyrannosaurus Rex out to watch us the other night. There were some others as well, but T Rex was most in evidence.

Scoop smashing dirt again.

I love this dump truck at least as much as Bertie does.


We visited Praia Sao Francisco with our new friend and colleague Derek. He brought his good camera and his lovely dog, and a fine time was had by all! Poor Ian missed it because he was flying home from Frankfurt. This is a panoramic view of about half the beach. It was a great day.

Beach belly baby!

Bertie is still pretty worried about waves, but he warmed up today.

And we did some awesome wave jumping!

Happily we had a number of buckets to put sand and water in. He was very busy and worked very hard!

Bertie also threw a bunch of sand back into the ocean.

Guita made a new friend too - this is Kawa, the delightful chocolate lab!

Pedra Badejo - Turtles!

Ironically, Bertie and Ian visited this cool little town about a week before I did. They went in an unofficial capacity, and I went officially to see the project. A group in Pedra Badejo, Caretta Caretta, is working to protect the turtles that lay eggs on Cabo Verde's beaches. The loggerhead turtle (Caretta caretta), an endangered species, lays eggs in the mid-Atlantic, and Cabo Verde is one of its preferred destinations. Unfortunately, people still eat turtle here, so nesting females are vulnerable to poaching. The NGO we visited organizes watches to protect the females, guard the nests, and help the babies when they hatch. It's a black sand beach, which is good for turtle eggs because black sand is warmer than white sand, making incubation shorter.

Pedra Badejo is a fairly poor place without much of a stand-alone economy. Fishing is big here.

Bertie liked it. He appears to have inherited his mother's ability to radiate heat...

Never travel without a dump truck.

A makeshift soccer goal.

All-terrain Bertie!

Bertie nose-to-nose with a turtle skull!

Reconstructing a turtle.

Hello, is that the ocean?

Turtle nests! The NGO brings them to a dedicated and somewhat protected place to incubate in safety. One of the nests had hatched a baby that morning and was expected to hatch the rest that evening.

Each tag has the date and the number of eggs.

This is the baby turtle born the morning of the visit.

A briny lagoon with lots of birds. The NGO is fighting plastic contamination as well as turtle poaching.

Documenting the documenting.

This bashful little boy had helped save an adult turtle the day before by alerting everybody to the fact that it was caught in a net. He got the fishers who owned the net and the volunteers together to save the turtle and treat its minor injuries. The turtle was released the same day.

Looking across the black sand beach to Maio Island in the distance.

Around Santiago Island

We live on Santiago Island, home to the capital city Praia and the majority of the population. There are stunning valleys, craggy peaks, and almost infinite micro climates, and they make for lovely scenery.

In the spring, we took a hike near Rui Vaz, about halfway up the island on the western side.

Traveling in style and comfort...

It was a pretty hazy day, but that's the ocean behind the cone.

Mama and Bertie!

Uncle Grant! Some of you may recognize him as Santa Claus.

Fogo Island (literally "fire" island) with its active volcano. It last erupted in November 2014. It's about 50 miles from Santiago. Some say it's the highest point in West Africa, but I haven't confirmed that. (The Atlas Mountains are not usually considered part of West Africa, though geographically they could be.)

Handsome hikers!

Looking out at the ocean again. It's very arid here.

We went through several micro climates on the 5-mile hike.

Look! Geology!

Nearly to the end. I think everybody was happy!


Our next big hike started in Cidade Velha - old city. This was the first Portuguese settlement in Cabo Verde and claims to be one of the first urban settlements in Africa (Ethiopia and Egypt, anyone? Perhaps by "urban" they mean "European?"). At any rate, it's all more than 500 years old and was frequented by the likes of Vasco da Gama and Christopher Columbus in their travels.

We hiked up a dry riverbed in a sort of canyon. It's very pretty but very dry.

There were a couple cool trees like this.

Goofy, hot dog.

Time for a water break!

Because it's a riverbed, there is a certain amount of water, and therefore, some interesting plants and flowers.

We made it to the head of the canyon and the spring!

And there was much rejoicing. And splashing!