Stand with me, in the cape of the green

Oh what I wouldn't give to be back in the consistently sunny climes of Cape Verde right now! After a truly depressing British "summer" (if we can even call it that at this point), I'm feeling even more glad that I spent a glorious week in July in Sal, one of the Cabo Verde islands. This one was another fun-for-the-whole-family trip (we typically do two trips a year where it's all 5 of us) and once again we had a fabulous time.

I guess you could say that Cape Verde isn't a typical summer holiday destination. Located off the west coast of Africa and boasting year-round 30 degree sunshine, the 6 hour flight is probably further than most people would care to go in July when it's pretty much the same weather across Europe. However, I'm not most people. And when me and my dad were locked in another custody battle of who gets to be in charge of the holiday, Cape Verde came out as the perfect destination for us all. New country, perfect weather and exotic enough that it didn't feel like a waste to stay in one place all week. The hotel we picked was amazing and after a quick (6 hour) hop, skip and a jump from Birmingham airport, we arrived at the Riu Cabo Verde. I've stayed at Rius a couple of times now and am always really impressed; they always have beautiful pools and a great selection of restaurants. But since we'd arrived pretty late, there was no time to ponder any of that right away. We just got changed, headed straight out and cheers'd to the week of fun ahead.

I don't often do these all-inclusive kind of holidays but when I do, I like to do the blog posts slightly differently. Rather than posting a play-by-play like I do in my other posts, I just give a few snaps to sum up how I spent my days. There's only so many ways I can rephrase "sunbathed, drank loads of cocktails and read my book" after all. But what a perfect way to spend a week it is - we certainly made the most of the all inclusive bar! For reference, all my bikinis are shein because based on the quality of them all, I now refuse to pay more than £15 on one.

I can't fathom travelling all that way and then seeing nothing of the actual country though, so I was excited that we'd scheduled in a day to explore. There were a number of "island tours" available online but we actually booked with a guy on the beach and were so happy with our tour. Rather than being shepherded on and off a coach with loads of other randoms, we travelled in style on the back of a pick up truck and were able to plan the day exactly as we wanted, since no one else was on it with us. It also meant we had a local guide who took us to loads of cool places and taught us a bit about the island. If you do go to Sal, definitely avoid the tripadvisor tours and book local! You'll see why I say that when you see what an amazing day we had...

First up we stopped off at a beautiful shipwreck beach where you can often whalewatch from (especially during breeding season), and then we drove through a shanty town before heading further into the desert to see a mirage. Can you see how the last photo looks like there's a big expanse of water up ahead? All an illusion! To say the country is literally named 'green cape', it wasn't particularly green. It was a very arid and dusty sort of place, but very beautiful nonetheless.

The next stop was a place called blue eye, which is like a sunken pool that looks like a bright blue eye when the sun shines down on the water through the hole. It was a real beauty spot and we managed to time it perfectly, as once the sun moves round too far you can't see it anymore and we just managed to catch it!

After a quick stop at a gorgeous swimming spot, it was time for lunch! We headed to the local fishing village and just went with the restaurant that our tour guide recommended, which was really lovely.

This was my favourite part of the day; getting to swim with baby sharks! We went to a lemon shark nursery and then just waded in the water and they swim right up to you because they're naturally curious. It was such an amazing experience and they were so cute! Although they do grow up to be 10 feet long so I'm not sure I'll still be saying that if I encounter any of these badboys again.

We rounded off the day at the namesake of the island; the salt mines (sal meaning salt in Portuguese). It's still an operational salt mine but it's mostly a tourist thing now, as the lakes are so densely saturated with salt that it's impossible to sink. It was a really cool experience (lots of fun trying to push Aidan underwater and failing) although I would not recommend getting any of the water in your eyes or mouth - burn baby burn!

Our island exploration tour wasn't our only official Day Of Fun - we also did an afternoon on a catamaran! I love a boat trip, whether it's in exotic places like this or just a little token zoom up and down the river ouse in York. This one was especially good though as we managed to snag the perfect spot on the front nets, the drinks were all unlimited so we were drowning in prosecco, and the day of swimming and sunbathing was rounded off with a dance class led by the entertainment crew on board. You can tell I managed to get plenty of sea air - look at those ringlets by the end of it!

On to the nights now and I've got some fabulous outfits to show you! I always like to match my outfits to the 'vibe' of the place I'm going to (a very high brow, philosophical concept that's hard to put into words). For example, this skirt has very cape verde vibes right? It was love at first sight when I saw it on shein and I paired it with black bardot floral top and gold bag and shoe combo. As I mentioned, the hotel we were at had a number of different a la carte restaurants as well as the surprisingly impressive buffet one, so for our first proper night we headed to the Italian one. It was a buffet style starter so, as you can see, I had a bit of everything, followed by seafood pasta for main which was very lovely.

I am way too lazy and busy to ever wash my hair every night at home, but I love doing it on holiday and being able to change up the hair for the outfit each night! I went with a straight centre parting look with this outfit, which was a delightful explosion of colour. The skirt is a recent favourite from Quiz; I never normally shop there and although it was expensive for the same fast-fashion quality as cheaper alternatives, I was impressed by the pieces. I paired it with slinky green top, red accessories and a very orange smokey eyeshadow look because clearly I didn't think there was enough colour going on so far!

The next night we were at another of the specialist restaurants, this time being a steakhouse. Well, it ended up being especially bad and they got every single one of our orders wrong but we seized the opportunity to turn it into a funny story instead, and on the plus side, we were joined by lots of cute friends and the dessert was pretty good. My outfit was also pretty sweet (see what I did there) - this dress was a favourite of my shein purchases from last summer and this time I paired it with cream bag and shoe combo. The shoes are Primark and if you can manage to squeeze them in your baggage allowance (they're ridiculously heavy) then they're the perfect pair for holiday.

Ollie and I had planned to mix it up the next night by taking a break from family dinners and having a bit of a date night at the fancy fusion restaurant. But unfortunately it ended up being another comically bad dinner! In fact, I've never stayed anywhere like this where the buffet was amazing and the a la cartes were bad. So after laughing about another failed meal, we met back up with the others for some drinks and some card games. I was also happy to be reunited with my preferred photographer - my mum has more patience and better photography angles than Ollie! It was another bright and colourful outfit, these orange primark shorts fit like a dream and I always love this shein scarf top on holidays.

We were getting to the tanned part of the holiday so it was time to start rolling the light clothes out to accentuate the tan! I love the fluted sleeves on this cream bodysuit and the red scarf print skirt was another that screamed cape verde vibes to me when I spotted it online.

And just like that, our last night rolled around all too soon! Naturally, I'd saved a white outfit for the last night, and I made this white broderie anglaise dress pop with some bright red accessories and statement earrings. We had a fab night and then after one last day of sunbathing, we were on our way back home to the rain. I may not do this kind of holiday very often but it was so needed, so appreciated and so very much enjoyed! It was literally the best time with (almost) all my favourite people and I can't imagine ever tiring of family holidays. Anyone who stops going on them once they're an adult is seriously missing out (being an adult is overrated anyway). In fact we have such a good time together that the next group trip is already booked! The next one is a Christmas market trip so it will require less sun cream, but pretty much the same amount of beer.