Ohhhh man, windsurfing is fun. On Saturday, I actually managed to tool around the bay, zipping back and forth. Granted, the board I was using is for beginners, i.e. huge board, small sail, but François was impressed with me overall, which is good. The one thing I am having a hard time with still is turning around without getting off the board and into the water. You have to kind of twist the sail around and let the wind push the board 180 degrees around, while you shuffle your feet to the other side. I fell a lot trying to do that. But I feel an addiction forming. François still refuses to let me pay for lessons. He says I owe him just a beer.

Sunday, I went for a long hike up north. I went past MarineClub, but instead of exploring the first little valley, I continued past, to where a dried up ribeira has carved a much larger canyon and bay. I climbed up a tall hill, mostly on all fours, and then skirted the edge of the valley, still heading north. The view from up on top was pretty damn good, though a small mountain was blocking my view of Sal Rei. Unfortunately, there is an access road leading to the top of the hills from another direction and it looks like a lot of people have chosen to get tanked and smash their bottles up there. Lame. Nonetheless, my goal was to get a view of the northern coast, so I kept going. After I got to the top of another rise, I found that I could see Cabo Santa Maria, which is a huge sweeping beach that covers about half the north shore of Boa Vista. I could also see the famous shipwreck that is there. Who knows how old it is, but it is a huge rusty cargo ship that wrecked itself right on the beach. For whatever reason, no one ever cleaned it up, and now it is an icon of Boa Vista, appearing on post cards and paintings. It was probably 5 miles away, but it’s a pretty big boat, so I had no trouble seeing it. I also got for the first time a solid view of just how small my island is. Standing on the hill, I could see both the north and west coasts, as well as the long oasis that stretches from Vila to Rabil, not to mention the Deserto do Viana beyond, and the mountains off in the distance. In all, I probably had a full quarter of the island in my field of vision. I guess it helps that it is mostly flat. On top of my small mountain, there was nothing but brown dirt and volcanic rocks everywhere. There are also dry river beds everywhere, and you can see how perhaps once upon a time, there might have been more water here. I’ll bring a camera next time.