As for itself, the journey towards the extreme south of São Tomé had everything to drag on.
The fact that we were faced with an obligatory first stop in Pantufo did little to help.
Pantufo was a mere 3km away from the island's big city. With almost two thousand inhabitants, this outskirts on the capital's seafront planted together with abundant houses blessed by the church of São Pedro, in the vicinity of the lawn of FC Aliança Nacional, the club that concentrates the sporting passions of the land.
And yet, what catches our attention is the frenzy in which we found the sand below the Estada de Pantufo, at a time when its fishermen were returning from their work.
Groups of them join forces to pull the boats out of reach of the high tide. Others, already in the company of families, examine the caught fish.
Not sure how to deal with our unexpected interest, they choose the most voluminous and impressive specimens of fish, for example, a beautiful fish that still has a lot of the blue of the Atlantic.
The route remains close to the sea. At the doors of the yellow and pointed Church of Santana, the two directions separate.
South-North transit is almost over the ocean. On the opposite side below, we head towards Água Izé, a village and site of another unavoidable garden in São Tomé and Príncipe.
Roça Água-Izé. A Slave Project of a Black Made Baron
An unusual historical fact, it sets it apart from the rest. The Roça Água Izé was the work of João Maria de Sousa Almeida (1816-1869), a prince of black origin. Son of a landed colonel, member of a surprisingly wealthy and influential black family for the time.
According to his resources, the Baron of Água Izé, as D. Luís proclaimed in 1868, traveled the world. He has accumulated a curriculum and life experience that, in and of themselves, is a story.
He was a military commander, governor of Benguela and a trader in Angola.
He lived in Lisbon, from where he left for a European tour. Later, he crossed the Atlantic to discover South American Portugal.
In Brazil, Portuguese settlers maintained one of the largest plantations in the world, at the expense of the labor of millions of slaves kidnapped in Africa.
Also in this chapter of the Portuguese colonial era, João Maria de Sousa Almeida proved to be a case apart. Or not so much.
The Agricultural and Slavery Investments of João Maria de Sousa Almeida
Despite his black origins, the Baron got rich from the slave trade.
Returning from Brazil to São Tomé and Príncipe in 1853, he took with him a series of novelties that would prove the basis of the archipelago's colonial agricultural success: coffee, tobacco, palm oil and cocoa, which he claimed to be the tree of the poor.
Two years later, in Praia-Rei, now known as Água Izé, he planted the first cacao trees and inaugurated what would later be revealed to prolific cocoa production of the Principe Island Company.
And after half a decade, he already had such a command of the secrets of cocoa that he published a complete study on its planting and processing.
The obedience of her slave workers, this one, won her over by cruelty. Indifferent to his origins, João Maria de Sousa Almeida resorted, over and over again, to violence and heartless punishment.
When we descend to Boca do Inferno, a volcanic slab that generates exuberant marine geysers, such blows from the Atlantic are almost null.
Accordingly, the guide who takes us there places the emphasis of the visit on the myth forever associated with the place: “they know that Baron João Maria de Sousa Almeida so impressed the São Toméans that they began to see him as supernatural.
With regard to the Baron of Água-Izé, between mythical and real but surreal stories, it would make for a novel on its own.
The Free but Very Humble Life of Roça Água Izé Post-Independence
Returning to the houses surrounded by coconut trees, banana trees and other tropical flora of Água Izé, we find the old farm in full activity.
In a warehouse, a team of natives choose the cocoa, bag it and stack sacks, a job that is not enough for the more than 1200 inhabitants of Água Izé.
As we walk around, we cross your non-cacao day-to-day life.
Children who, in the street, wash dishes, pick freshly picked bananas or take school TPCs by light outside their home. Mothers who breastfeed newborns, others who grill fish.
Still others who rest seated against the walls of the old sanzalas, engaged in good-natured conversations.
Ribeira Afonso and his Unconformist Washers
Having completed another 6km to the south, a new expression of Santomean life proves too exuberant for us to ignore.
The narrow way. Fits into a bridge. To both sides, the Ribeira Afonso, which we crossed, was full of washerwomen and already washed clothes, stretched out in the sun on the rocky banks.
In good African fashion, some women had babies strapped to their backs. They rocked the shoots with the rubbing and back and forth of their vigorous bodies.
Unsurprisingly, that profusion of washerwomen attracted the attention of foreigners who passed by. The women were more than fed up with being photographed, so our efforts met with near-immediate disapproval.
"Stop it! It's the same thing every day, do you think this is the zoo or what?”
From Ribeira Afonso down, the road gives way to a series of intricate meanders. It conquers the jagged coves of Micondo and returns to the interior.
A new sharp curve leaves us at the entrance to Roça São João dos Angolares.
In Roça with the Tachos in São João dos Angolares
It was about lunchtime. And it was the São Toméan dishes and snacks from the TV show “In the countryside with the pots” that made Roça São João and the cook João Carlos Silva famous.
We are greeted by an assorted flock of ducks too busy with their feather arrangement to make way for us.
We pass to the terrace. We found it shared by groups of guests, friends and family, who enjoyed appetizers.
João Carlos Silva is also there, it couldn't be otherwise. The host starts his gastronomic show of the day.
Supported by some helpers, he creates a sequence of traditional snacks, made with banana, passion fruit, peanuts, chocolate, seafood and many flavors from São Tomé.
And with a privileged view over the surrounding property and the bay of Angolares in front. Such a meal and the setting in which it was served deserved the rest of the afternoon in contemplative rest.
Accustomed to photographic nomadism, we force ourselves to take up the itinerary again.
The Tropical and Eccentric Pico Cão Grande Mirage
As we had prepared it, we knew that the way to the southern tip passed through one of the strange and emblematic elevations of São Tomé.
We expected to catch a glimpse of him at any moment. The vision did not take long, lacking the vegetal purity it deserved.
After the village of Dª Augusta and Praia de Pesqueira, São Tomé, lined with its natural and endemic vegetation, gives way to an endless planting of palm oil palm trees, the same ones that Barão de Água Izé introduced to the island and which , increasingly, throughout this world, profane the tropics.
We proceeded south. We left behind Monte Mário and Henrique. We arrive at Ponta da Baleia, which serves as an anchorage for boat connections to Ilhéu das Rolas.
We cross Vila Malaza.
Porto Alegre, its own Roça and the Funds of the island of São Tomé
On the other side of the bay that welcomed it, we arrived at Roça Porto Alegre, and returned to the historical sphere of the Sousa Almeida family.
Jacinto Carneiro, son of the Baron of Água-Izé, was founded.
Although remote and accessible almost only by boat, Jacinto Carneiro managed to expand it and turn it into a serious case of agricultural multi-production, to the point where, in a self-sufficiency regime, it became the second largest property in the south of São Tomé , with a vast territory that included the Ilhéu das Rolas and six dependencies.
Roça de Porto Alegre maintains a configuration that is unique, with an alley of palm trees leading to its main house, next to the employees' homes and the long swathes.
A single element clashed with the expected scenario of a Santomean farm. By some war contingency, rusted and taken over by vegetation, an old battle tank had found the last landing there.
And, crossing it, the equator line that marks the tropical environment of the Planet.
