Who we are

Cabo Verde Beach Sport resort is an enterprise of the van der Schild – Rodrigues family.

At a volleyball tournament in Spain, Marcel and Alcinda met in 1993. This is the short version of Alcinda. Marcel’s version is much more romantic, but too long for this website. They start living together and in 2001 they go on vacation together to the country where Alcinda was born: Cape Verde. They visit the islands of Santiago, Sal, Sao Vicente and Santo Antão, where Alcinda was born in the village of Lagoa. Marcel is incredibly impressed with the country and the people and especially the huge difference from the Netherlands. They also meet the 2-year-old girl Alineida, who steals their hearts. What kind of future does she have ? This little girl became their first project. Elementary school, high school, where she also went to play a lot of volleyball, and then came the question of going to college. In 2022, the young lady graduated from Cape Verde.

Meanwhile, they had had a daughter of their own. And like her big “sister” in Cape Verde, Kayleigh went on volleyball. She is now 18 and will hopefully get her VWO degree in 2024.

That moment has been looked forward to since 2017. A new project; “can we bring some employment to the island? They came up with a small hotel with 8 rooms on the first floor and some facilities on the Ground Floor. They asked the Camara Municipal (kind of city hall) for a piece of land of minimally 600 m2. It became 8,000 m2.

With the creativity of mathematical formulas, Marcel drew a kind of inverted aquarium; very efficient, but it stopped there. By chance, they ran into an old acquaintance; Alex da Silva, an artist trained as an architect in the Netherlands. He wanted to revise Marcel’s drawings and devised a plan with his friend and student, also an architect, Zico Lopes. On Nov. 14, the trio presented the beautiful designs at the Camara Municipal. Alex spoke of Santo Antão as if he were telling a romantic fairy tale. People thought it was great; an enrichment for the island. But the brilliant plan also became a lot more expensive. Marcel and Alcinda decided to return to the first plan; 8 rooms.

6 weeks later, everything changed: Alex died during a game of basketball. It was barely comprehensible. The dejection was enormous. Unimaginable that this could happen. We picked up his sketches again and without words decided that this was going to be it. 16 beds became 94 beds. It was up to Zico to convert the grand master’s sketches into a real design; a difficult but honorable job.

Not yet mentioned, but just as important, is Sonya Dias. Sonya was well known in Rotterdam as a hostess and organizer of various events. She left for Cape Verde and fell in love with the island. In 2022, she started as General Manager at the beach sports resort; a job that suits her perfectly.