HIS HOLIDAY
“WHAT if we're killed on the mountainside in a tropical storm while you're
sunning yourself on the beach?” I asked Alice Miles shortly after we arrived
in São Tomé.
“It would ruin my holiday, but not my life.”
I reported this to my partner.
“C'mon,” he said. “You know Alice. It's you with the problem - you in one of
your clockwork adventure-hamster modes. You with your 'Hey, Alice, we're all
dragging ourselves on our bloodied hands and knees up this appalling
volcanic peak and you're going to love it'.
“Instead, just say after me: “Alice - - doesn't - want - to - crawl - up - a
6,600ft - mountain. The lady's not for camping. Deal with it.”
OK, OK. But I bit my lip at Lisbon airport when I learnt that she hadn't even
brought a proper rucksack, sleeping bag or heavy-duty climbing boots.
She never needed them - any more than I needed the mountains of underwear,
beach hats, turquoise plastic clogs or selections of soap and moisturiser
that came tumbling out of the Miles suitcase after we had checked into our
friendly little hotel in the island nation's small eponymous capital. I did,
however, worry about the chewed soft-toy goat with matted fur that Alice
pulled out of her bag. “It's my daughter's. She wants me to introduce it to
a real African goat.” How was I ever going to take her columns on the
salient features of Alistair Darling's Budget seriously again?
The other tourists on our five-hour flight from Portugal went - all six of
them - to another hotel. “Tourism's up by 17 per cent,” said Luis, who
managed the efficient travel agency that helped to organise our holiday. So:
ten tourists this time where previously there might have been eight. They
and we were the only holidaymakers from Europe on the island.
Even at dawn the damp, faintly scented air hit us like a warm flannel. And now
we had miles of white-sand, palm-fringed beaches, a warm ocean, stone-paved
and potholed roads, the peeling charm of the island's former Portuguese
colonial plantation houses, and the misty green mountains and orchid-decked
cloud forest of São Tomé's stunning interior, all to ourselves. We had time.
Our chance to visit the other (smaller) island of Príncipe, that with São
Tomé makes up this nation, had vanished with their only passenger plane: the
operators of the Cessna explained that it had departed for servicing in
Angola - “and unfortunately it has not come back”.
First we visited the town's sad and moving little museum in the old fort: a
museum, really, of colonial brutality. On the wall was a portrait in oils of
the 18th-century settler who later introduced cacao to the island: José
Ferreira Gomes. “What's in that wooden box underneath the painting?” asked
Alice. Our guide opened the lid. Sr Gomes was in the box. In kit form.
But it was into the interior that my partner Julian, our friend Antony, the
Dutch botanist and photographer, and I, soon headed. Alice and her goat
headed down to a beach hotel as we boys turned our backs sternly on the
ocean and headed uphill into the clouds. Thunder rolled.
The equatorial sky threw everything at us that day. We were soaked, baked,
sprayed, steamed and mud-spattered. Lightning startled us, cool
ridge-breezes fanned us, and the returning sunshine surprised us. None of us
had ever seen within one sweep of the eye so many shades of green. With
Africa about two hundred miles behind it, this massive mountain sticks
straight out of the sea into the Atlantic sky.
It's a nine-hour muddy scramble, that's all: no ropes, no harnesses, no
climbing skills; just dogged determination needed. Creepers lash you, birds
serenade you and bright tropical flowers console you as you haul your way up
from trunk to trunk. Pause on the bony fingers of the stupendous ridges that
your path perilously traces and the breeze hits your face, and the sun comes
out - and it's all worth it. At the top we found a rusty plaque in
Portuguese. Our African guide translated. “20 August 1913,” it said, listing
the names of those who had made it ... “and they swear that they will never
come here again.”
But we were happy. From the beacon we could see tiny Rolas island lit in an
evening shaft of sunshine. There would Alice be. She (we now know) was
looking up toward us.
An evening on the summit by a campfire, dawn rain lashing our tent, and a
morning spent slithering down in the sunshine, capped by a pummelling
beneath a waterfall at the end - and we were back on the stony road to São
João de los Angolares where, in a peaceful, shabby, yet stylish, wooden
plantation house where they take guests and serve simple meals and heavy
Portuguese wine, we and Alice were reunited. A cool African band in blue
pyjamas had turned up, and she soon had everyone dancing.
More excitement lay ahead. The night I saw the Southern Cross and the pointers
to the North Star in the same sky, floating low at opposite sides of the
horizon; the warm swim in the cold rainstorm off the wonderful little
eco-lodge at Jalé. The cloud of millions of white butterlies like ghosts
among the palms; Alice's resolution to quit Britain and open a plantation
house and sell the jams she made while her new husband (me) dealt with
guests ...
HER HOLIDAY
I WAS having my bikini line waxed in preparation for our departure the
following day. Matthew was probably at home counting his tent poles. Well,
there are certain standards you don't want to let slip, even in a remote
part of Africa. Mine is bikini line; his is tent technique. You can judge
later which of our preparations was the more useful.
The girl stripping me was listening to my conversation with a colleague as I
explained our plan over the phone: very hot place, right on the Equator, one
flight in and out a week, limited accommodation, rainy season, and Matthew
kept going on about camping. “It sounds horrid,” said the girl as I put the
phone down. What she hadn't heard was my colleague roaring with laughter.
“You do realise,” he said, “that he's completely mad?”
I am happy to report that Matthew Parris is not mad. Maddening, occasionally -
how can a man choose to be in so much discomfort? So tired? So soggy? And
yet so unfailingly good-humoured?
We met at Lisbon, Matthew's luggage bristling with camping equipment, mine
replete with knickers. I have a pretty strict rule about pants on holiday:
you take a pair per day, plus one in case of accidents. Matthew - well, best
not to go there, perhaps. Suffice it to say that if I considered myself
below quorum on the pants front, having packed only the six pairs in homage
to this being “travelling”, not a holiday, Matthew wasn't even approaching
the negotiating table with his paltry three pairs. I mean, eight days! Three
pairs!
“But you wash them,” said his friend Antony, a rather brilliant and beautiful
photographer, who along with Matthew's partner Julian, was accompanying us.
“You wash them in the shower, with shampoo.” Now I know and you may know,
and Antony obviously didn't know, that Matthew doesn't use shampoo.
Enough. Away with the pants. We won't mention them again. We are here to talk
about a beautiful, ramshackle, glorious, remote and stormy African nation
called São Tomé and Principe. We are here to talk about friendship
(wonderful, ramshackle, stormy, whatever). And we are here to decide whether
it is possible for two people, one of whose idea of fun is to run up a
mountain and camp at the top, the other of whom believes holidays mean
beaches and reading, can enjoy themselves together in the middle of nowhere.
In the rain.
And what rain. Even as Matthew headed off up a volcano with his tent, and I
headed to a remote beach, it pelted down. I found myself on a small boat,
African driver shrugging as he peered through impenetrable mist. The storm
blew, it cleared. We made it. A man insisted on giving me an open umbrella
moments after the rain stopped. “Please. Please.” Well, it is that sort of
place. Wonderful. I stepped ashore, drenched, in glorious sunshine, brolly
aloft.
A missing plane meant that we never did make it to Príncipe. Another time,
perhaps. For I shall go back: back for the quizzical good nature of the
people, the inexpressible beauty of the place, its volcanic peaks, its
perfect beaches. I shall go back for the almost indecent fertility of the
rainforest, each tree bursting with fruit, every plant flowering profusely:
it's a sexual place - you can see everything reproducing all around you.
There is a woman, baby on her back, small children at her feet, washing tin
plates in a river; there the men who watch her, lounging in shelters, as men
always seem to do in places such as this. And there is Matthew with that
tent again. Take it away, Matt! I'm not getting into it.
Places such as this? The soul of Africa with the spirit of Brazil, the fertile
green of the tropics with the food of the Caribbean and the verdant sea of
the Malaysian isles - there is no other place like this.
Its rarity is protected by its inaccessibility: just the one flight a week
from Europe. A scatter of airport; people; certificates; passports; smiles.
“They look so delighted, as if they have been given a country to play with,”
said Julian, and he was right. They were given a country - or given their
country back - by the departing Portuguese thirty years ago.
But you can look up all that stuff. What you want to know about is Matthew. He
climbed his volcano, I made it to my beach. He grew a beard, I shaved my
legs. He staggered back to Roça de São João, a plantation house in the
hills, exultant, and found me in a hammock, candlelit, glass of wine in
hand, relaxed, reading - and with clean knickers on. My secretly harboured
suspicion that I might turn out to be more macho than the men was pure
fantasy. I wasn't - although listening to three gay men giggle about a
beautiful Italian chocolatier one evening, I did begin to wonder.
I never did get to show off to Matthew the effects of my holiday preparations.
He felt as much need to get familiar with my lower regions as I did to get
familiar with his tent. In the end, however, he did get me camping. On a
beach.
Need to know
Alice and Matthew paid £650 return each flying to São Tomé via Lisbon with TAP
Portugal (www.flytap.com). Their
accommodation was arranged by local travel agency Navetur (www.navetur-equatour.st).
Cape Verde Travel (01964 536191, www.saotome
travel.co.uk) offers tailormade holidays to São Tomé flying via Cape
Verde from £1,240pp for two weeks at Club Santana hotel, including
breakfast.
His 'n' hers: a tale of two travellers
He packed: two tents, sleeping mat, sleeping bag, Gore-Tex coat, 1 pair
trousers, 1 pair shorts (with hole in bottom), 2 T-shirts, 1 shirt, 3 pairs
socks, 3 pairs pants, free cap from Llama World.
His washbag: toothbrush, toothpaste.
His footwear: one pair of broken sandals rescued from a Bolivian dump
and mended with rough yellow string. Walking boots(second hand).
His favourite moment: Being pummelled by a waterfall after a two-day
climb up a volcano.
His most alarming moment: Being introduced by Alice as her husband at a
hotel where she needed to fend off admirers.
She packed: silk sleeping bag liner, 3 pairs trousers, 1 pair shorts, 6
T-shirts, 4 long-sleeved tops, 1 sweatshirt, 5 pairs socks, 2 bikinis, 1
mosquito net, 1 pillowcase, 1 rain jacket, 6 pairs pants, sunhat,
sunglasses, sarong. One stuffed goat.
Her washbag: toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, moisturiser, tweezers,
nail scissors, nail polish, face soap, razor, body wash, hairbrush, travel
wash, sunscreen.
Her footwear: Sea-green Crocs sandals.
Her favourite moment: Being pummelled by a masseur after a three-hour
lunch.
Her most alarming moment: Matthew's declaration on the last day of the
holiday that he still had one unworn pair of pants.
I have an email address using Sao Tombe from three years ago so anything to do with this relatively unknown island ~~I find intriging. Not sure who was clever enough to realise that the top level domain would be "st", but all of us living in Streets thought it a good idea.
Martyn Rees, Sydney, Australia