Birthday Trip to Santo Antão: Valleys, Grogue, Chaos

Birthday Trip

When I lived in Germany and Switzerland, I always hoped for snow on my birthday — January 10th — and most of the time it didn’t really work out.

Meaning: it rained. ;-)

.So I started trying to spend as many January 10ths as possible in the tropics instead. Blue sky, sunshine, warm air. The kind of birthday where you don’t have to negotiate with three layers of clothing just to go outside.

And somehow… that doesn’t always work out either.

Last year in Rabat, it was a grey day, and I was so sick I spent most of it in bed. This year we tried a bit further south and ended up in Mindelo, where there’s at least a decent chance of live music in the evening.

Instead, we got a full-on Sahara event on the 10th. The sky looked like it was about to be the last day on earth.

You could barely see 100 meters. Everything was yellow. The wind was blowing up to 30 knots.

So yeah — another birthday spent different than anticipated.

Nike, being Nike, decided to ignore the calendar entirely. As soon as the weather calmed down, she invited me on a trip to the neighboring island of Santo Antão. A few days off. A change of scenery. No pressure to “do something special” on the exact date.

That was last weekend, and it proved once again how much easier life becomes with a bit of flexibility.

We left Santana on a mooring buoy in Mindelo, rented a car, and got an Airbnb so we could move around freely — follow the weather, follow the roads, follow whatever looked promising.

Santo Antão is the second largest island of the archipelago, and the one with the highest mountains. Because of that, it gets the most rainfall — and with it, actual pockets of green. The south is mostly bone-dry, similar to São Vicente where we are right now, but the northern coast holds these magnificent valleys that feel like a different country.

We stayed near the beach, close to Porto Novo, the capital of Santo Antão, and started our day trips from there.

And oh boy… what a place.

Santo Antão is basically the garden of Cabo Verde. I read somewhere that the islands still import around 90% of their food, and that most of what is grown locally comes from Santo Antão’s northern valleys.

What impressed me most was the farming itself: the terraces, the way they’re built into steep hillsides, and the irrigation systems that somehow make water appear where you’d least expect it.

Valleys, Views, and a Last Drone Flight

My favorite areas were the Paul Valley and the region around Xoxo.

The crater was nice to see — kind of a “yep, that’s a crater” moment — but compared to the valleys, it didn’t stand a chance. The valleys feel alive. Deep green, steep walls, tiny farms carved into impossible slopes. The kind of landscape that makes you stop talking because your brain is too busy trying to process what it’s seeing.

And of course… I brought the drone.

I didn’t fly it in the Paul Valley at first, and later I had this feeling of, No. I’m not leaving without getting footage here.

And for a moment it was perfect.

I had just captured what Nike called the best shot ever. The kind of shot where you think: Yep. This is why I carry this thing around. This is worth it.

Then Nike said, “Let’s fly home.”

And one second later all I saw was a bush, my drone trying to fight its way free, and alarms going off like it had just developed its own nervous system.

I stood there feeling slightly stupid — because I knew that flying sideways close to cliffs is asking for trouble. But I got so fascinated by the flight that I forgot. Which is basically the story of half my problems in life.

And well… it’s like with sailing, isn’t it? Either you never do it, or you lose something sooner or later.

So now the drone is somewhere up there, stuck on an almost vertical part of the mountain, impossible to reach. At least it died in a beautiful place.

Grogue at 10 AM (Purely for Cultural Research)

One thing that surprised me: tasting grogue where it’s made is a completely different experience than buying it in a shop.

The whole setup was refreshingly… unromantic. No fancy tasting glasses. No polished “visitor center.” Just big blue buckets — the kind they use for transporting basically everything on these islands.

There was a real fire burning under about 100 liters of fermented sugar juice. And then they distilled it down to roughly 20 liters of rum at around 45% alcohol.

And that’s what they handed us.

At 10 in the morning.

And because we are clearly responsible adults, we also happened to have an empty water bottle with us… which turned out to be the perfect container to “continue the party at home.”

The funny part is: it tasted good.

Fruity, a bit yeasty, and surprisingly smooth. The kind of smooth that makes you forget it’s 45% — which is exactly how you end up making ambitious plans for the rest of the day.