I recently had the chance to spend a week in Cape Verde. We were staying in Tarrafal on the island of Santiago. Tarrafal is a small city (about 6k people) in the nortwest of Santiago. It's known for its beautiful beach and fishing boats. It's not particularly known for diving - I could find very little information about it beforehand. Most diving in Cape Verde is on other islands, and most diving on Santiago is out of Praia. But there is one dive shop and I got to go out 4 days.
Getting to Cape Verde was easier than I thought. I had to search a lot of different flight combinations, but ended up flying on my own to Boston, then flying Azores Air from Boston->Sao Miguel->Praia (Santiago). All in all, about 11 hours in the air from Baltimore. Not bad. Azores Air (SATA) is small - their fleet is only 5 planes. But they treated us better than US carriers. Make note - you can request an exemption for diving gear. I was able to check one 22kg bag for free and the exemption meant I could check another 15kg bag for free, too.
Once in Praia (the capital), we took a shuttle up to Tarrafal. Took about 2 hrs and cost about 50 euros. Winding road, lots of altitude changes. Beautiful countryside. The island of Santiago was experiencing drought and was very dry and brown. Fields were left unplanted and livestock looked unhealthy. Our contact said they had gotten 3 days of rain in the past 18 months. Once in Tarrafal, we stayed in a rental property. A few adjustments needed to be made - no hot water, no potable tap water (for non-locals). But the bugs weren't too bad, the electricity was pretty solid, and there was wifi at a cafe nearby. Food and drink were very inexpensive. There is a general lack of infrastructure but the people were nice and I never felt unsafe. Tarrafal is not primarily a tourist town, and the tourists who were there were all European (except me). Very few places accepted credit cards, but some places did accept Euros. Most shops only accept the local currency - the Escudo, pegged to the Euro at 110:1. There are 2 ATMs in town that worked with my debit card and gave Escudos. There is a hostel for super cheap accommodations and a few (upscale-ish) western-style hotels. Most attractions in Tarrafal are walkable, but there are cheap hop-on, hop-off taxis, too (best to have a local to help with this). There are shuttles all the time back and forth to Praia that pick up in the town square.
The diving is conducted out of a shop called Divecenter Santiago (Divecenter Santiago, Centro Mergulho Santiago, Santiago divecenter). The shop is located in the Kingfisher Resort, but you do not have to stay at the resort to dive there. The Kingfisher is walled off and caters to European tourists (mostly german). It seemed nice, but I didn't get to see a room. Emmanuel & Georg (who run the dive shop) speak like 6 languages between them, so communication was always possible, as long as someone speaks English, Portuguese, German, French, or Spanish. The shop used steel tanks, and they had 10l, 12l, and 15l. The tanks were DIN, but adapters were available. The shop owners were extremely knowledgeable about local fauna. Emmanuel even wrote a guidebook (which I really wish I would have purchased). The DMs who went in the water were very adept at finding critters, too. Emmanuel changed his schedule to make room for a DSD with one of my travel companions. He ran a very thorough DSD and she had a great time.
The shop is located on a little bay (I call it Kingfisher Bay) that has a wonderful shore dive. You descend a ladder (fins on) and can swim out either left or right, or both. Depths go gradually down to a max of 20m.
I was able to do 4 dives in this bay, and I also went out on the boat for 4 dives. As long as you have a buddy and have done their checkout dive, you can dive the bay on your own. The boat has a protracted schedule, with one dive at 9:30am and another at 1:30pm, returning to the resort in between. They will try to flex to guests' schedules, but only so much can be done. The boat is very small (6 divers max) and does not have any safety equipment, but you're never that far from shore and they know what they're doing. Getting on and off the boat required navigating a ladder (not too bad at high tide, but tricky at low tide). Boat dives offered more topographical variety (walls, boulders, caverns) and some different species. I didn't get a chance to visit any wrecks. The boat dive profiles were aggressive. My perdix set to medium GF was dipping down under 5 min NDL on most boat dives.
Water temperatures averaged around 22C (71-73F). I was comfortable in a 5mm full wetsuit with 5mm booties - no gloves or hood. In Kingfisher Bay, there was lots of surge and significant tidal exchange. Off the boat, there was some current, but nothing too bad. The topography was volcanic rock, with lots of interesting crevices and formations. My main interest was to find macro subjects, and I was not disappointed. I saw 5 new nudibranch species and one pleurobranch, most of which are endemic to cape verde. I encountered other endemic fish, too. Didn't see anything too big, but lots of great small stuff. These were my first dives in Macronesia and it was really interesting how many species were similar to those in the western Atlantic - similar, but a little different. And then there were creatures I associate more with the Pacific, like tunicates. All in all, it was great to experience something new. I wanted to post this because I could not find any information on Tarrafal diving. Maybe this will help the next person.
Full picture galleries are here:
On Land: https://www.flickr.com/gp/bmorejojo/1xY21K
Underwater: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm9WYxvq
Samples below.
Getting to Cape Verde was easier than I thought. I had to search a lot of different flight combinations, but ended up flying on my own to Boston, then flying Azores Air from Boston->Sao Miguel->Praia (Santiago). All in all, about 11 hours in the air from Baltimore. Not bad. Azores Air (SATA) is small - their fleet is only 5 planes. But they treated us better than US carriers. Make note - you can request an exemption for diving gear. I was able to check one 22kg bag for free and the exemption meant I could check another 15kg bag for free, too.
Once in Praia (the capital), we took a shuttle up to Tarrafal. Took about 2 hrs and cost about 50 euros. Winding road, lots of altitude changes. Beautiful countryside. The island of Santiago was experiencing drought and was very dry and brown. Fields were left unplanted and livestock looked unhealthy. Our contact said they had gotten 3 days of rain in the past 18 months. Once in Tarrafal, we stayed in a rental property. A few adjustments needed to be made - no hot water, no potable tap water (for non-locals). But the bugs weren't too bad, the electricity was pretty solid, and there was wifi at a cafe nearby. Food and drink were very inexpensive. There is a general lack of infrastructure but the people were nice and I never felt unsafe. Tarrafal is not primarily a tourist town, and the tourists who were there were all European (except me). Very few places accepted credit cards, but some places did accept Euros. Most shops only accept the local currency - the Escudo, pegged to the Euro at 110:1. There are 2 ATMs in town that worked with my debit card and gave Escudos. There is a hostel for super cheap accommodations and a few (upscale-ish) western-style hotels. Most attractions in Tarrafal are walkable, but there are cheap hop-on, hop-off taxis, too (best to have a local to help with this). There are shuttles all the time back and forth to Praia that pick up in the town square.
The diving is conducted out of a shop called Divecenter Santiago (Divecenter Santiago, Centro Mergulho Santiago, Santiago divecenter). The shop is located in the Kingfisher Resort, but you do not have to stay at the resort to dive there. The Kingfisher is walled off and caters to European tourists (mostly german). It seemed nice, but I didn't get to see a room. Emmanuel & Georg (who run the dive shop) speak like 6 languages between them, so communication was always possible, as long as someone speaks English, Portuguese, German, French, or Spanish. The shop used steel tanks, and they had 10l, 12l, and 15l. The tanks were DIN, but adapters were available. The shop owners were extremely knowledgeable about local fauna. Emmanuel even wrote a guidebook (which I really wish I would have purchased). The DMs who went in the water were very adept at finding critters, too. Emmanuel changed his schedule to make room for a DSD with one of my travel companions. He ran a very thorough DSD and she had a great time.
The shop is located on a little bay (I call it Kingfisher Bay) that has a wonderful shore dive. You descend a ladder (fins on) and can swim out either left or right, or both. Depths go gradually down to a max of 20m.
I was able to do 4 dives in this bay, and I also went out on the boat for 4 dives. As long as you have a buddy and have done their checkout dive, you can dive the bay on your own. The boat has a protracted schedule, with one dive at 9:30am and another at 1:30pm, returning to the resort in between. They will try to flex to guests' schedules, but only so much can be done. The boat is very small (6 divers max) and does not have any safety equipment, but you're never that far from shore and they know what they're doing. Getting on and off the boat required navigating a ladder (not too bad at high tide, but tricky at low tide). Boat dives offered more topographical variety (walls, boulders, caverns) and some different species. I didn't get a chance to visit any wrecks. The boat dive profiles were aggressive. My perdix set to medium GF was dipping down under 5 min NDL on most boat dives.
Water temperatures averaged around 22C (71-73F). I was comfortable in a 5mm full wetsuit with 5mm booties - no gloves or hood. In Kingfisher Bay, there was lots of surge and significant tidal exchange. Off the boat, there was some current, but nothing too bad. The topography was volcanic rock, with lots of interesting crevices and formations. My main interest was to find macro subjects, and I was not disappointed. I saw 5 new nudibranch species and one pleurobranch, most of which are endemic to cape verde. I encountered other endemic fish, too. Didn't see anything too big, but lots of great small stuff. These were my first dives in Macronesia and it was really interesting how many species were similar to those in the western Atlantic - similar, but a little different. And then there were creatures I associate more with the Pacific, like tunicates. All in all, it was great to experience something new. I wanted to post this because I could not find any information on Tarrafal diving. Maybe this will help the next person.
Full picture galleries are here:
On Land: https://www.flickr.com/gp/bmorejojo/1xY21K
Underwater: https://flic.kr/s/aHsm9WYxvq
Samples below.
