Surely you’ve discovered that the downtown area has many old Portuguese houses. You know? Those noble houses of Sao Felipe are called “sobrados”, and all have a common characteristic among them are designed and built to create different spaces, for all the inhabitants of that island slave. Any color (blue or pink, yellow or green), but all the houses have two floors and wooden verandas, a ground floor for commercial use (where they lived slaves and servants), a first floor reserved to the owners. Only once a year – during the feast of Santa Cruz – the invisible colors of segregation disappeared, and the servants and slaves could climb those steps, forgetting for one day every other day of the year. http://www.capeverde.com/
The archipelago of Cape Verde, and Sao Filipe, certainly gave you the memory of the two towers of the blue church of Igreja Matriz, the Town Hall and the Cemeterio Velho. I hope that you are also going to visit the House of Memory, the small museum next to the church, because the nineteenth century house has been restored and furnished in an incredibly beautiful way. Think, its patio was the first island of Fogo cinema. I’m sure you’re also went on the nearby island of Brava, to watch the sunset, but I’m also sure two things: you’ve picked up a handful of sand very black, and you closed your eyes, listening to the pleasant sound of silence. http://www.capeverde.com/islands/fogo.html
I did not go to the Tropical disco, but to Fogo en Chama – high up in Sao Felipe – because its musical evenings, every weekend, are really special. I remember my trip to the island of Fogo, a last week of April, because the folklore of the Festa das Bandeiras has remained in my eyes. Many people (from the entire archipelago, but also many emigrants), were enclosed in a timeless dimension, where sacred and profane, tradition and modernity, faded with each other, dancing and processions, horse racing flags and parades. What is my memory of Fogo? Its black lava cone 3000 meters of loneliness that caress the clouds in the ocean. https://www.expedia.co.uk/Sao-Filipe-Hotels-Hotel-Xaguate.h11866626.Hotel-Information?AFFCID=UK.network.affiliatewindow.229117.0&awc=3456_1455620031_7e07f8d25f90dfbbfaa3962c080fb55d&src=phg
