“Cape Verde…our first all inclusive holiday…”

I can’t tell you how much I have been looking forward to this holiday! Nathan and I have been on many adventures but this is our first all inclusive holiday !! What started as us searching Bulgaria 🇧🇬 and Morocco 🇲🇦 for holidays, turned into Nathan liking the look of the hotel in Cape Verde 🇨🇻 and clicking book. A couple of months later and here we are…

As with anything it was all last minute.com. I mean packing left to the last minute is standard but I’m very much of the mindset so long as I have a change of clothes, a bikini and my passport, that’s the minimum requirement to go away! I couldn’t tell you what I have actually packed (albeit I’m currently on the plane writing this part of the blog and Nathan says to me “Have you packed a towel?” I reply yes. Turns out he hasn’t!!)

So I of course then think to myself on Sunday, let’s find a hotel to book and go up the night before because we fly at like 7am. Why I didn’t think of this before I don’t know, so there we were scrambling about on the internet trying to find a hotel. The cheapest one was £140 for one night and even with my loyalty voucher from hotels.com that still would be over £100 for a night. All the hotels were booked including the travelodges etc. Next time we must plan in advance…

Another reason why we needed to plan in advance is because the alarm went off at 2am, was snoozed until 241am and then it was a mad dash to get cases in the car and be off. My fault. Whoops! The next issue was I kinda forgot to fill up with fuel after I left work Monday sooo I had about 120 miles in the tank. Gatwick is about 115 miles away….Next I left my pillow at home so had to go via my house to collect that and then we were off.

Or so we thought. No sooner had we got to St Ives roundabout (about fifteen minutes from home) all of a sudden the dual carriageway went to one lane. Following a lorry at 3am whilst it’s only one lane wasn’t fun, we then got diverted off the slip road and we thought “ah that’s ok it’s just sending us up and over the roundabout.” Nope!!! The whole of the road was closed so we had to go back along a different road heading in the totally wrong direction and it added 20 minutes onto the time. We then stopped along a road and tried to google how much of the road was shut as it was going to take forever to get to the airport and thankfully after a bit of a long detour we finally hit the motorway and were well and truly on our way.

The next down side was the tyre pressure fault light came on at this point so we were just hoping that the car actually got us to the airport. It did. Phew. I do literally live my life with a sort of “fly by the seat of your pants” mantra and this morning was no exception! Anyway, we arrived at the airport, parked, missed the first bus, caught the second and got wet walking to the terminal.

Surprisingly check in was incredibly quick. Zero queue for bag drop. Zero queue for hand baggage check and then we could finally sit down and enjoy a breakfast. I say enjoy, it was a quick “wolf it down” as the gate information came up about ten minutes after we sat down. Stomachs full we headed to gate 565, boarded our ridiculously small plane (I can’t recall the last time I did a 6 hour flight with a single aisle plane) and sat down to relax.I now remember how much I hate having the aisle seat. I lost count of the amount of times I got knocked by people coming down to use the toilets. Or by the trolley cart with drinks and duty free. Oh my god. And…I swear I have never seen so many people use the toilet on a plane. There was a queue from the minute the seat belt sign went off to the minute it came back on. There was always someone waiting for it! What were they drinking!!Anyway, the good news is we actually got a complimentary breakfast on the plane (despite me asking Nathan several times if we got fed) which consisted of omelette, sausage, beans and potato finished off with orange juice and a pain au chocolat. Sooo we didn’t need to rush to have breakfast despite TUI saying they don’t provide meals for ‘ mid haul’ flights. I do however, like watching what people wear to fly in. I mean I’m always comfort over style (not just on a plane haha), but I don’t get how or why people would fly in a suit or heels. Baffles me every time. No sooner were we in the air the cabin crew took off their heels and went for more comfortable flats and the little hats they wear also came off.

No in flight entertainment (weird) meant I had about 6 episodes of the last series of ‘The Originals’ to watch. Nothing better than sitting on a plane having a good sob watching something crazy emotional. Not. I passed it off as me yawning and something in my eye. Many times…(despite watching it twice before)…

The drinks cart came round a few times and we treated ourselves to the wine and cider on offer (start our holiday early!!) and then we waited to land. We left behind the miserable English weather and landed in hot sunshine. Can’t wait for a week of sheer relaxation.We landed into a teeny tiny airport and it wasn’t long before we’d parked and then disembarked. The airport was all pretty much outside and those bits under cover had just a sort of tarpaulin over the top. WE GOT A STAMP!!!! After the sheer disappointment of no stamp when we entered Australia the noise of stamp to passport page was well and truly welcomed!!! The passport is filling up…The airport, as cute as it is, wasn’t the most practical. Why when there’s only one flight landing they don’t use both conveyer belts for luggage is beyond me. Instead you had about two hundred people crowded round one belt trying to figure out which case was theirs. Us too! Luckily Nathan’s is bright orange so easily recognisable whereas mine just blended in with the rest. When we managed to worm our way to the front and grab our bags the ever so helpful lady next to us said “oh that’s gone around a few times!” Thanks….

Bags got, it was time to head outside to the coach. Coach number 5. There’s only a few hotels you can actually choose to stay in in Boa Vista Cape Verde so it must have been quite easy for the TUI reps to send people to coach 5 and whatever other numbers there were! The transfer time was approximately 30/35 minutes and then we pulled up to the front door of the RIU Touareg hotel! A week of 5* luxury….The hotel was beautiful. A huge lobby as we entered and were greeted by a friendly waiter serving us tropical juice. Then it was time to check in and head to our room. The complex was huge. I can’t remember the amount of times I said “is it this way?” Or “damn, that’s the wrong way.” We got to our room, dumped our bags, waited for the porter to bring our cases, changed and headed to get some lunch and a sunbed! After all, we had to make the most of the sun! Lunch consisted of a hotdog, washed down with wine and beer then we headed to the pool.Now it wasn’t all sunshine and blue skies on this island, it was very windy and at times very cloudy and at one point we even had teeny tiny drops of rain land on us! Still, it was so unbelievably nice to be able to switch off from the world and enjoy our time away! The main pool had a wonderful swim up bar that served everything from tea and coffee, to spirits, cocktails, iced coffee, soft drinks, beer and wine on tap. It was literal heaven! As you can imagine, trying to find a sunbed round a pool at about 2pm, where there’s over 1000 rooms, proved to be quite hard. All the ones by the pool were taken so we found two in a sort of alcove which led to the beach. It didn’t matter where we sat so long as we managed to catch some sun and chill. Oh and in close proximity to the pool!

Running on not much sleep, a few drinks and some welcomed heat, it wasn’t long before we were both falling asleep on the sunbeds. Probably not the best idea when you have no suncream on. We decided it would be best if we headed back to our room for a quick nap before going to dinner in the evening.

That nap turned into a 14 hour sleep…

Until next time…