Return From Eden

It's been a long arduos journey back from my Cape Verdean excursion of semi-paradise. I can not remember a time where I wasn't exactlt thrilled to leave a strange country in order to return home.
I wondered if I would forget all the wonderful times, people and places I encountered and consider this trip another exotic journey. Yet I find myself longing to return to the rough, raw countryside, the wild ocean tides and gentle mountain breezes.
Have I become so cynical as to believe that one must travel thousands of miles to find a special beauty that has eluded my own sense of time and space in country. One wonders - with all the problems we are having now - if that is not so.
There have been so many beautiful memories that I am at a loss for gathering any special one. Let me say that I have found a very special place that I felt I truly belonged and welcomed the time and joy at having the opportunity to share them with so many different people.
Not many people - in America - know much about Cape Verde. For it is a best kept secreyt amongst europeans as an African eden away from all the trials and turmoils of so-called civilized society.
It is one of the few spots where a man or woman can truly find whatever they are looking for without fear or suspicion. All need one do is merely wake in the morning and walk outside the door, up the street and down the hill to the beach.
Even as I sit and go through the thousands of eclectic images I long to return to a place and time that has yet to catch up with the pressures and problems of our world. In a sense, I hope it never does. But like many unspolied tracts of land, water and regions I'm afraid this will come to pass as well. And all these images will only be a testimony of what once was. My excursion to paradise lost.