São Tomé, São Tomé and Príncipe

We had our flight back to São Tomé at 4pm so had the day to kill. We didn't have much motivation, and the hotel was okay with a late checkout, so we just lounged around our room for the morning.

Lunch was being served down by the beach. We took the 'shuttle' down as we didn't want to get all sweaty before the flight. The truck was in use so they were going to give us quad bikes to go down and up, but then the truck came by and we hitched a ride.

Read a bit in the cabana until lunch. It was grilled chicken and fish, both were pretty good. The South African group was also on our flight so we felt a little more secure that the hotel would remember to take us to the airport.

The truck took us back up to the hotel around 2:30pm. We had mostly packed up before lunch so it was quick for us to get ready.

The airport checkin was very casual. There's no X-ray or anything, just a guy looking through our carry-on. We were also allowed to leave the secure lounge to go to the bathroom and then re-enter on our own.

Oh yah, yesterday at Makaira we ran into a guy that we had seen at the restaurant in Santo Antonio. We chatted with him and the person he was with. It turns out she works at the Claudio Corallo chocolate factory and said she would register us for the tour on Monday. Otherwise you have to line up at 8am to sign up for the tour later the same day at 4:40pm.

It was a smaller plane for this flight, only 19 seats, and no flight attendant or safety demonstration. Fortunately we had used seat belts before and knew how to lock and unlock the seat belt.

We arrived in São Tomé and waited for our luggage. It's much easier when there's only 17 other people. It was a domestic flight so we just walked out of terminal and caught a taxi. We got the correct price right away (10 EUR), no need to haggle.

We checked back into San Pedro Guesthouse, a better room on the upstairs floor. Showered and looked up restaurants on tripadvisor. Went to the #3 rated one this evening, Papa Figo. It was really good grilled fish. Had a vinho verde (all the restaurants here bring over an ice bucket or other means of keeping wine chilled). The restaurant was packed with mostly expats and locals, and a couple of tourists. There's so few tourists that we recognized a few of them. Walked home. Another good night of eating in São Tomé!