Arriving early on a Sunday morning, the Catholic family decided to take in mass on the island. Although they speak Portuguese here, all Catholics know that the parts of the mass are the same and you can fully participate, although the homily is hard to follow! We started out a little bit on the wrong road. We were given information from a gal that came onto the ship as a city representative that the Sunday mass would be at 10:00a.m. Knowing this we wanted to go early because we had no idea where it was and needed to take a cab or shuttle into the town and find it. After making only a few wrong turns on these very beautiful cobblestone streets, I stopped a man and he in broken English pointed out where to find the church. We got there. 40 minutes early!! Mass did not start until 10:30a.m. We walked around the church area for a while and then took our pew. You would have thought that we all had bananas on our heads! People were staring at us like we had certainly made a big mistake but when we did not leave during the almost 2 hour mass...they figured out that we were probably the family from Alabama that they had heard about on the Internet! Two hours of swatting flies and enjoying the really great music provided by their youth choir. It was great. However, the man across the aisle from us must have had bacon in his pocket because at one point there were about 25 flies on his pocket! fter mass we looked for a lunch spot. That wasn't too easy. he roads are not marked well and nobody really speaks English. We found two policemen and one of them spoke Spanish! Yippee! Communication at last! If you are considering learning a foreign language, don't just consider it anymore. Do it. Might we suggest Spanish or Mandarin. These are the two languages that seem to be taking over the world.
Found the lunch spot and had a great meal and watched the local life. We found a few small shops open. Not much was open because it was Sunday. It turned out to be one of our favorite tours and we had no idea what we were doing. We just got lucky and ran into some nice people.
Because of this islands' remote location it is different than any other part of Africa. It is also richer, better educated and healthier than any other country in Africa. They are well known for having HUGE Mardi Gras celebrations and it feels like you are in Rio here more than you are in Africa. They speak Portuguese like in Brazil, they dance like they do in Brazil and the people are beautiful like they are in Brazil. Although it is hard to get to, this would be a place we would tell you to highlight and make a trip. It is enchanting.
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