In the Desert: Wind and Dust

The soundtrack of this post is the wind. Howling incessantly, not stopping at night, sometimes making the waves uncannily move away from the shore as the wind seems to blow predominantly towards the sea.

I am on a sand tormented peninsula at Cabo de Vela. By the time this is posted, I shall no longer be here though, since there is no internet on the whole peninsula. Oil and natural resources, yes. Roads and electricity or drinking water for the wayuu peiople who live here? No. Somewhere in the equasion there are politics and corruption. 

Begging seems to be a national pasttime here. Especially for the children. I adhere, as always, to UNICEF’s advice to never give anything - money, sweeties  or goods - to begging childrem, and one worn sign on the beach requests the same. Yet it’s hard, when what children beg for is water.

The kids here in the village of Cabo de Vela are fine and can do without my offerings. But on the way we drove for hours next to a railway track in the middle of the desert, where very ragged and thin children held out their hands and shouted for water. If we had been going slower, this time I would have cracked under the pressure for sure.

Inland on the peninsula, things just look desolate. There are spindly bushes and trees that grow 1-3 m tall. Under them extremely spiky cactuses. Amidst the cacti are thin tufts of yellow grass. But goats and even a few bony cows graze here. I saw, for the first time ever, a cow with lots of green spots! The spots turned out to be hand sized leaves of cactus, which had stuck to the poor cow’s flanks as it tried to reach the grass. 

Everything here is wind whipped, sand blasted and dust infested: The road, the bush, the cows, goats, goatherds, the children begging on the roadside and - somehow heart wrenchingly - the line of newly washed clothes hanging by a very humble, mud-walled hut.

But after a few hours we reach the coast and Cabo de Vela. What a difference water makes! The pale blue-green sea sparkles in the harsh sun and gives even the dustiest of towns a certain glamour.

There is not much here. A street by the beach 

Lined along the streets are mostly restaurants and places offering accommodation - most often hammocks on the beach, sometimes little huts where the sand blows through the walls at nights and trickles onto your face.

But my oh my the traditional hammocks here (called chuchirros) are the most beautiful I’ve ever seen!

There is, of course, also Sami’s school appliance store

And a good few groceries, which often have more shelves than goods in them. And a couple of kite surfing schools. 

The bay is full of kite surfers, who seem to spend as much time in the air as on the water.

Toilets are flushed with buckets of seawater that hotel owners carry in from the sea by the bucketful and showers are with the more precious fresh water, which is transported by tanker from a nearby fresh water reservoire. Washing water is rationed to one bucketful per day.

One wonders what people here were doing before tourists found the place. This was a fishing village, and there’s a few fishermen still in around. 

But most people are employed in the service industry - serving us tourists. Apart from the restaurants and guest houses, there are armies of ladies and girls trying to power-sell colourful bags to tourists. With some success in my case, since these bags are just beautiful! 

I will spend the next two days here. Then I’m off to the even more remote Punta Gallinas. More sand, more wind, more sea.