Wow! Sums it all up for me.
I recently went to the cape verde island to try to convert myself from a windsurfer to a kite surf.

I booked myself in at surf zone located on the santa maria beach. It was fantastic. When no other schools would teach due to wind direction, they took me to kite beach or punta preta for our lessons. It exceeded my expectations, as i was taught on flat as well as wavey waters. I now feel prepared to kite anywhere.

Although it is not the easiest of conditions for beginners, water being deep and all, it certainly a good place to learn and confidently kite else where.

Surf Zone team were great and often spent longer than the allocated time to ensure that had enough time on the water. What was great though was there was the group size was 2 people to an instructor.

Better than the kite surfing was the windsurfing. Although gusty in the bay -once you got out it was heaven on water. What was great was that i could use equipment at either one of thier schools. So on days when the wind was not great in Santa Maria i went to thier punta preta location and windsurfed there.

The island itself was not so impressive, other then the white sandy beaches and the cute little village of Santa Maria. Basically if you are not doing water sports of some kind and can not spend days lying on the beach -you could go nuts here.

The people at the school were great and gave me a list of resturants to eat at, more local places and bars to go to.

I would definitly go again. I have an itch to spend more time at kite beach and thew other two wave spots-punta sceno and punta lembje. I did not get so far in my kiting, but i hear the instructors at the zone do a lesson with an amazing down winder from kite beach back to the school.

I can not wait! i hear the wind is good until end of may, so may sneak out again to get rid of that itch.

Aside from that it is merely an island, or more rather a constructon site with beautifull beaches and good for kite and wind surfing.

Only other thing was the theft. But this is normal for developing countries, when poverty meets tourism. If you can look pas the sand, the consturction and the moon like feeling of the island, it is a place definitly worth going to.