You are my oldest friend. It all began when I was nine and you were ten, and it’s been fifty years. We met at school, back in the days of wine and roses of the Mozambican era, when we lived in paradise but didn’t know it then; those days when we dreamt of knights and damsels, kings and castles, battles, and bravery; those long, hot summer days when we sat for hours in my swimming pool, just enjoying the moment. …
Tag: island
My dear friend I’m on the plane back home and I realize that only a week ago I was arriving, tears of emotion and excitement blurring my vision of your island, my favorite place in the world. And time went by so fast, so damn fast, slipping through my fingers like grains of sand, that I could no more hold in my hands than all those years ago when my holidays in Madeira were a month long, and even …
The boys have just returned from a holiday on the island of São Tomé with their father and they tell me they have spent a wonderful week exploring this island, a former Portuguese colony in the equatorial area. In fact the country is called São Tomé e Príncipe, the main island being São Tomé where the capital city is located; Príncipe (meaning prince, thus called after a prince of Portugal) is much smaller, but even more beautiful, or so people …
It was first discovered by Portuguese navigators in 1419. It is said that they were frightened when they had their first glimpse of those green high mountains that rose sharply from the dark blue sea. And then, when the ships approached land, there was no place they could disembark on, because the whole land was covered with trees, an abundant thick forest that came all the way to the sea…and then, because the sailors wanted to settle there and there …
