Northern Edge: Surfing Cape Verde’s Soul

At the northern edge of Santiago Island, where the land tapers and the wind speaks first, there’s a camp with no walls: driftwood bones, canvas skin, and men who rise when the ocean whispers. Over five sun-drenched days, we visited. Sébastien with his camera. Me with notes. What we found wasn’t really a story about surfing. It was a story about rhythm. And stillness. And presence. This is Tarrafal’s surf camp: its pulse, its poetry, its magnetic soul. A place where time moves like water and the water speaks.

Up on the northern lip of Santiago Island, where the land narrows and the wind barrels in thick from the open Atlantic, there’s a camp, far from the buzz of cities, the surf broke uninterrupted. Just sun and smoke from the day’s fire. Here, the sea is teacher, mirror, and prayer. The locals, sun-warmed, sand-dusted, move in rhythm with it. Cape Verde is a place people often leave, seeking opportunity elsewhere. But here, on this northern edge, this place held its own kind of gravity. We came curious, cameras in hand. We stayed longer than we meant to, and left a little less certain of what we thought we knew.

“Kada un tem si mania,” Aggy told us that first morning, barefoot by the fire, slicing ginger into the pot. Everyone has their own way. Aggy Semedo, tall and bright-eyed. If the ocean had a son, it might be him, not for raw talent, but for pure trust.

Morning light spilled into camp as bodies stirred from hammocks and hardpack. Already moving, barefoot in the dirt, touching boards like relics, murmuring over dings with surgical care. Among them, Aggy moved with ease, not the center, but steady. A quiet guide, less coach, more current. A presence within the Tarrafal Cabana Surf School, though it’s less school than rhythm, less rhythm than family.

We woke early, when the sky was still considering its colors. Someone boiled bush tea over the night’s remaining embers: lemongrass, cinnamon bark. Some mornings, they steamed cuscuz, a corn cake dense with warmth and memory—over the fire in a soot-coveredd clay pot. Sweetened with banana or plain, it drew everyone close, hands out, eyes soft. Food was shared. So was silence. All eyes toward the horizon line.

“Agu ki ka ta korri, ta stagna,” Aggy said one morning, passing me a tin cup. Water that doesn’t flow stagnates. He gestured toward the sea, the mountains, and the boys rubbing wax on boards. “This place, it keeps flowing.” Their drinking water arrived in plastic bottles, like most of the island’s, brought in from elsewhere.

The boards, chipped and patched, sun-bleached and stitched with resin, leaned against volcanic rock. The boys, lean, wind-carved, guided nervous tourists into their first standing rides at Ponta Brava. Their voices coaxed fear into wonder. The waves here weren’t world-class, but they were real. They asked for presence, not performance. His surfing wasn’t loud. It was faithful. No spectacle. An offering.

Every evening, the cabana became a theater of rhythm. Guitars plucked raw. Djembes drummed. Lungs hummed. Nyabinghi. Sacred rhythm. Kids chased a puppy as they danced in and out of the firelight. They lived without excess, never without abundance.

Laughter was abundant.
Time, too.
Stillness.

One afternoon, the wind fell and the sea turned to glass. Delfy, a camp regular, busied himself braiding shells into a necklace he’d sell to a passing tourist. “Don’t need much,” he smiled. Was he speaking to himself? Or to something in me?

Aggy and I spoke about money more than once, what boards cost, what travel requires, what a sponsorship might mean, but the subject always floated, never landed. He didn’t seem obsessed, just aware. He was living in the tension between the rhythm of now and the weight of what comes next. As was I.

His phone lay cracked and ignored. No business plan, no strategy. His way wasn’t about convincing others. His way was just being there.

And the water, warm, textured, at times chaotic, offered what it could. On some mornings, the swell played along. On others, it didn’t. But for Aggy, the measure wasn’t solely the size or shape. It was what the sea allowed him to feel. Enough.

On our last morning, we woke just before the sun. The fire out. The beach quiet. Aggy was already in the water. Alone.

He knew what he was chasing. Not recognition. Not approval. Not even mastery. Something deeper. Something older. The stillness behind the movement. Connection to source. Grand rising. Livity.

He won’t leave. Not yet. Maybe never. Some people are meant to root. To hold the line. Teaching those passing through how to listen, to soften, to stay present as the wave breaks and builds again.

Seb and I packed slowly.
The road south waited.

We left knowing this: Aggy will be here, riding, teaching, laughing, waiting. And the camp will breathe with him. Driftwood bones. Canvas skin. Salt, rhythm, and time.

Let it echo.