“Hi, jag heter Kjell, and I will be your reseledare this week”, the young man in a blue shirt and a yellow tie announced in a curious mixture of languages, while passing out our information folders.

 

He continued, “This is the map. This is where you shop, this is the Internet café, this is where you eat, this is where you get a taxi. Everything is marked. Don’t go anywhere else, you don’t need to.”

 

The heads on the shuttle bus nodded in agreement.

 

“You book other trips through us, you rent cars through us, you rent bikes through us. Don’t go anywhere else, you don’t need to.”

The heads nodded in agreement again. Except ours. Instead, we had questions.

“Why there? And why like that? And why not here?”

Kjell looked at us with obvious contempt. “Because that’s how we do things.” was the only answer he gave us.

 

Welcome to Cape Verde, Swedish style. This wasn’t the Africa of Hemingway or Livingstone but of Fritidsresor, a Swedish vacation charter company. 600 years ago Diogo Gomes discovered and conquered Cape Verde for the Portuguese and now it was being reclaimed by the Swedes.

 

Sometime in June, my friend and I visited a local Umeå travel agent to inquire about a few of the more obscure holiday destinations. The travel agent lady really knew her stuff. Mozambique, Suriname, and Mongolia didn’t faze her in the least bit. She even kindly suggested alternatives like Namibia, French Guyana and China. And yet we still couldn’t make up our minds. Finally the words “Well, what about Cape Verde?” flew out of my mouth. The travel agent’s eyes lit up like Christmas lights on acid, as she pulled out a Fritidsresor winter catalog. Wow! We could book a whole package trip if we wanted to! Hell yeah! And so we did.

 

In the Great White North, come December, a company like Fritidsresor provides an invaluable service shuttling frozen, pale, shivering bodies to the tropics. In other words, your typical vacation packager, but with a truly Swedish flavor. From the blue painted planes to the on-board menus and duty free selections of snus and beer, you are left with no doubt, that although you might have left Scandinavia for warmer climes, you are never far away from the things you love and need to feel proudly Swedish.

 

After one night in our Swedish colony, convivially furnished by IKEA (from sofas to teaspoons) and complete with Swedish language TV manuals and menus, we took a quick run through the town and learned we could do everything Fritidsresor had to offer, and more, using local businesses. Which turned out to be a great way of meeting local people, and contributing to the local economy. Our local tour guide, who spoke fluent English, French, Spanish and Portuguese and held a degree in tourism and recreation from Rhode Island, had nothing but sour things to say about vacationing Swedes.

 

“You will see why” she said when we stopped for lunch. And we did. Sitting in a separate group, away from other diners, in their own little Swedish world, eating spaghetti and complaining about the lack of meatballs. Oblivious to the fact that random strangers, like us, may actually understand what they’re saying.

 

“If you wanted to eat spaghetti and meatballs, and drink Swedish beer, why the hell did you travel all the way to Cape Verde? Yes, I know they have Swedish bars in Thailand, just for morons like you, but this is not Thailand, in case you haven’t noticed”. A Swedish tour guide almost choked on her spaghetti. Turned bright red and stared at us without comprehending what had just happened.

 

Our local tour company gave us more insights. Fritidsresor considers local providers to be unfit and unsuitable for the highly refined Nordic needs; and lacking its own infrastructure, subcontracts German or Italian companies. Which in turn subcontract the very same local providers that Fritidsresor claims are unfit and unsuitable. That the price the gentle Nordic citizens pay balloons to epic proportions doesn’t seem to bother Fritidsresor in the least. But it did bother the Swedes we met on a trip to a nearby island. Why? We paid 50 euros less per person. The Swedish guide quickly separated the Swedes from the rest of the unwashed hordes of Germans, Britons and two lone Americans, and pacified her charges, most likely by promising them an extra meatball each for lunch.

 

On the return transfer to the airport, Kjell did not want to talk to us. Other travelers however did. “How did you mange to do all this in a week?”, somebody asked when hearing our stories of volcanoes and ancient Portuguese fortresses. “We ditched Fritidsresor, and went with the locals.”, we answered. “Wow, the only local we met, was the woman cleaning our hotel room…” the Swedish lady said, “But you’re right, she did speak excellent English.”

 

When traveling between the islands, we met a rep from Ving (a rival vacation packaging outfit) scoping the area, so is there hope for some healthy competition? Don’t hold your breath. As the Ving dude said, they plan to bring in their own people, and do things the Swedish way. Just like it should be.