São Tomé – São Tomé and Príncipe

Bloody turtles. It wasn’t long since I last had this rant. After a very busy first day, after dinner, we had driven down a sandy track to an NGO that was taking care of the local turtle population. Here we would get a chance to see a turtle making a nest and leaving a deposit, or possibly the release of some babies. The NGO lady wasn’t so hopeful when we arrived. This bothered me. I had survived the day, but I was exhausted. I didn’t need to see turtles yet again, but I also didn’t want to fall into the trap of turning down opportunities to do all I possibly can when travelling. I should have stuck with my gut feeling, not that it could be trusted at that moment. Anyway, the lovely NGO lady gave us a very interesting talk about the conservation project and revealed many interesting facts including the classic that only one baby turtle in 1000 will survive to maturity and, something I didn’t know, baby turtles have enough energy reserves to get them through the first five days of life. That’s mighty impressive considering they have to dig up through a metre of sand, scramble across many metres of beach, tackle the surf, swim in search of food, and avoid all but certain death. I never said I didn’t respect turtles. 

I woke the next day feeling much more human and stopped daydreaming about adult nappies. Just across the water from our ecolodge was a little island that we headed out to and spent a good morning hiking and sweating. The island is inhabited with around 200 people who make a meagre living from the coconut palm plantations. The island, barely the size of two average farms in the UK is the perfect example of why I believe nature is screwed. There is no need for a permanent settlement. It’s a five-minute boat ride to the main island which is exactly the same. Surely the turtle NGO lady and her crew should be on the little island and free of human settlement other than day visitors? But then of course the NGO would want visitors to pay to stay the night so they could see the turtles arriving which then means a permeant settlement. Still, as a simple tourist, it was a beautiful place to visit. We scrambled up a hill to a monument that marked the equator and offered some splendid views. From here we found ourselves immersed in palm trees, walking over years of discarded coconut husks until we popped out at yet another spectacular beach. This repeated itself all morning, from one unbelievable beach to the next. We finally stopped at one beach for lunch where we also happened upon something of a rarity in these parts, tourists. We had spotted one or two on the trail, but they had been rare until now. Even so, there weren’t so many as to be a concern and our group took the opportunity to jump in the crystal-clear waters to cool off before yet another filling lunch. This time I didn’t hold back on the beers. I was feeling better, and besides, I had learnt a vital lesson. Drinking coke and bottled water cost exactly the same as beer. It appeared to be a wonderfully simplistic national pricing system as it varied little wherever we went and so economically it now made sense to drink beer whenever there was the opportunity. Cold beer really does feel like it staves off dehydration in such tropical environments. I love water, I drink it by the gallon anywhere in the world, but in an environment demanding you drink 50 litres daily, beer offers a refreshing change that breaks up the day quite nicely. In this moment my first bottle had barely touched my lips when a man with a bucket appeared. He had come to release some baby turtles for us as we had failed to see any the night before. It was all very sinister, and I suspect very much off-the-record, in that they had been illegally caught on the island for just this financial opportunity, a hunch of mine backed up by the fact that we could hold the babies and it was the middle of the day contrary to every other release I’ve seen. Being responsible tourists, we put all that to one side and enjoyed the moment as many super strong baby turtles and one or two weak or outright lazy ones headed to their inevitable death in the Atlantic. Feeling slightly dirty, I returned to my now less chilled beer. 

The following day, we drove into the interior of the main island, stopping for a short boat ride through a mangrove forest, most of which was spent discussing books with one of my compadres. As we climbed up into the hills the skies darkened and finally we felt a bit cooler, just in time to stop at another ex-colonial operation. Coffee. What remains of the processing facilities is now a local co-operative largely I suspect targeted at tourists. We had a nice little guided tour that featured some of the old processing machines and a wonderful little museum, but that was about the lot, other than a small cup of complimentary coffee at the end. It’s worth noting that almost everything Sao Tome and Principe imports comes from Portugal ($80 million) yet almost nothing is exported the other way ($2.3 million). The Netherlands imports almost three times more goods from Sao Tome and Principe than Portugal.

Before I knew it, I found myself in a place that can only be described as Insta-friendly. That may be a bit harsh, but definitely Tripadvisor friendly. It was an open-sided restaurant made of timber that clung precariously to the edge of a not so insignificant drop. Even on a very Scottish day it still offered a lush view of the forest below. We sat down in a full dining area amongst all the other European tourists that had come to enjoy a renowned four course meal. We had barely got past the first dish when the clouds turned from their Scottish melancholy to an outright phyco-bitch Indian monsoon. To say I’ve never seen rain like it before would be a lie, but the sheer anger of it did spurn thoughts of us ending up on the nine o’clock news after the restaurant had collapsed down the hillside in a torrent of saturated mud. The rain – and the thoughts – persisted for a usually long period of time and so, figuring that none of us would be keen to go hiking to a waterfall after lunch as planned, three of us cracked into the first of two bottles of white wine. The entirety of lunch was well worth the hype. 

The next morning, I emerged from my lodge to be greeted by a vista of misty hills stretching out to the horizon. The excitement of getting out for a hike was slightly subdued by the talk of gigantic menacing spiders that had visited people’s rooms during the night. Vicious rumours had already circulated the night before leading me to seriously contemplate putting up my tent in the room to provide a bubble of safety. I thought this a slight over-reaction and instead went to bed terrified, but not enough to not fall asleep within seconds. Well rested, I was able to love every second of our nine-kilometre hike in Obo National Park. A hike that was advertised as relatively easy yet turned out to involve a fair bit of up and down on trails full of roots, rocks, and leaves. The route took us up the side of an old volcano where we continued along the ridge of the crater. However, it was hard to grasp any concept of our surroundings aside from a steep drop either side of the track due to being fully immersed in tropical forest and, as we gained altitude, plenty of soggy cloud. After a scramble downhill it was all change again as we popped out from the trees and stumbled onto a lake. A lake that looked more like a Swiss meadow, like a frozen lake, but instead covered with a thick layer of grass and vegetation instead of ice. It was a new sensation for me, walking over a field of grass that moved like a bouncy castle. Sipson grabbed a five-metre pole and stuck it through a hole in the turf to reveal the horrifying depth of the water below our feet. Unnerved, I returned to solid ground, we walked some more and pulled up by a lovely little stream for a fantastic packed lunch. It appeared our luck with the weather had come to an end with rain heavy enough to put on a raincoat and the bag cover, but of course, as soon as we were prepared for torrential rain, the sun came back out. After the hike, we could have walked down to the waterfall we missed the day before, but most of the group had had enough for one day and so we drove down. The highlight was being taught how to use a camera setting on my phone that gave a refreshing new lease of life to waterfall visits.

It had been a jolly good day. The weather had been kind, the hike epic, and it had been nice to explore the island away from the sea for a few days in order to see something a little different. I returned to my room after dinner cautious of what may be lying in wait. Too many others had come face to face with these mythical spiders for me to mercifully avoid them. Sure enough they were no myth. They were very, very real. I had acquired my own, sat up in the corner opposite my bed, the size of a teacup, he looked like trouble. I had no idea what to do. Usually, Rut deals with this stuff either by removing the beast herself or, by running out in a cloud of dust to get the tour guide in to remove it for me – it depends what mood she’s in. I therefore reached for my flipflop and approached the brute who immediately expressed signs of aggression – I swear – by attempting to grab my flipflop and beat me to death with it. He then backed down and ran under the curtain. I freaked out, not knowing where the hell he had gone to prepare his ambush. I coaxed him back into the open and, realising I could open the massive folding windows, I attempted to shepherd him outside with my flipflop. He fought me the entire way, stubbornly refusing to move until, finally, we reached a mutual understanding where I agreed he was outside far enough and, I like to think he agreed he wouldn’t dance on my face in the middle of the night. He also suggested, rightly so, that I go for therapy or hypnosis or something of the kind. 

15^th February 2024