Pictures:
1. Fishing boats in the inner harbor. The small building on the hill in the distance is the oldest building on the island. It was a fort and a slave prison.
2. Typical fish maket stall. The fishermen's wives so the selling.
3. Lady having a chat on the way to her banana stall in the market. Behind her you can see a lady already set up for business.
4. This is the indoor fruit and vegetable market. There are three aisles like this one.
5. Mindalo harbor from the ridge we crossed. We're not quite at the top here. You can see the Prinsendam on the right partly behind that small hill. The curve of the old caldera is clearly visible looking at the harbor.
6. This is a fairly good path heading down to the ocean on the eastern side of the mountains. You can see the beginnings of the dunes in the distance. That's Diana in the pink on the right and one of the leggy bushes on the left in the foreground.
7. This is a bad part of the trail. Rock scrambling was the major mode of locomotion on these stretches.
8. These are the dunes of Great Saharan sand right against the ocean. You can get some idea of their size if you look at the people on the road at the right. The dunes are about twice as far from me at they are.
March 23 – Mindelo, Saõ Vicente, Cabo Verde. Whenever I land in a new country I like to have a little background to help me anticipate the culture and customs of the place and how the people may react to me. Mindelo is the city, Saõ Vicente is the island and Cabo Verde is the country.
Cape Verde (Capo Verde) is a fairly remote ten-island group almost 350 miles directly west of Dakar, Senegal. All the islands and their associated islets are volcanic in origin. Only the one on Fogo Island is still active. The often experience droughts but rarely major storms. This is the area where many early season hurricanes form. You've probably seen people on the Weather Channel pointing out tropical depressions forming here.
It's Portuguese in background and when the first explorers arrived here in 1455 the islands were uninhabited. When they returned a few years later they established the city of Ribera Gande on Santiago Island it became the first and hence the oldest tropical European settlement. The supply station they established became a major jumping off point for further exploration by many countries when they weren't at war with each other. They did establish sugar cane plantations and eventually it became a major slave-trading center. Later during the steam area it was a major coaling station. It was also the site of a switching station for the Trans-Atlantic telegraph cable.
It gained its independence from Portugal in 1975 and was going to be united with Guinea-Bissau but the 1980 coup there stopped that plan. This was fortunate for Cape Verde because they are now cooperating with Portugal on every level and have risen from 3rd world status to be a 'country of average development'. Their currency, the escudo, was tied to the Portuguese money of the same name and is now tied to the Euro.
The official language is Portuguese, as is the language used in the schools. However a range of Portuguese-based Creoles are widely spoken. (A Creole is less than a language but more than a pidgin. If a Creole becomes very formalized and widely accepted it can be promoted to a language. At least that's how I understand it. Several very experienced linguists read my blog so if I get a correction from them I'll pass it on.) There's a movement to make the major Creole, badiu (the local language of the largest island), the official language of the country but the substantial differences between it and the other islands Creoles, each of which have traditional spellings as well, have made this impossible so far. The people are mostly mestiços, descendants of enslaved Africans and Portuguese settlers. Their heritage also includes Spanish and Italian seamen who were granted land here over the years as well as Jewish victims of the Inquisition who fled here.
My visits to Brazil and my friendship with two missionaries who have served there and the Luciphone (sp?) countries of Africa have given me some rudimentary knowledge of Portuguese which I have used successfully in the past. We'll see how it goes here.
Our tour is called 'Discover Saõ Vicente' and that about covers it. We are touring in small vans as the island does not have tour busses and even if they did the roads would not accommodate them. I prefer small van touring anyway so it's fine with me. Our guide is currently student teaching at the local high school to finish up his B of A in English and his teaching credential. He speaks English with an American accent because many of the teachers in the university here are Peace Corps volunteers from the USA. His English was impressive for a 20-year-old Cape Verde native.
We spent the morning touring the city of Mindelo. We stopped at the fish and vegetable markets first to beat the crowds that will be shopping later. I always find these places very photogenic and they were no exception. Along the waterfront they have a smaller copy of the Torre de Belem (Tower of Bethlehem) you can see across the river from Lisbon in Portugal. They also have a monument to the two airmen who flew the first flight from Portugal to Brazil. Our guide failed to mention that these guys crashed two aircraft and had new ones delivered by ship before they got there. There's a monument to them next to the tower in Belem, Portugal that's shaped like their aircraft. It doesn't mention the crashes either. To learn about them you have to do a little research on the Internet. The Fairey IIIB, a wood and canvas seaplane, was a very good aircraft that served the British Air Force from 1917 to the end of WWII. Why they crashed two of them going to Brazil I really don't know. Pilot error comes to mind.
We toured the Cultural Center, a collection of images and artifacts from the islands historical and present culture. We stopped by the small city church. The most remarkable thing there was an oval painting in the middle of the wooden ceiling. It was Mary Our Lady of Heaven. She's shown in the clouds with a large crown and halo. It's mainly done in white, gold and pale blue-gray producing a very serene mood.
From there we walked past the Presidential Palace, a wooden structure in pink outlined with white. We reboarded our vans and headed into the suburbs to visit a small workshop where a young man, Paulo, makes guitars. His space is about 8 feet by 15 feet. All his tools are hung along the back wall on one end of the shop. In front of the tool storage he has his workbench. Wood, partly finished guitars and a baby carriage take up the rest of the space. We all filed in and took up all the walking space around his bench. He showed us the forms he uses for bending the wood for the bodies. He had a partly finished body so that he could show us the inner structure. He hand carves the neck and the head then mounts a fret board to it and sets the frets. Of course these have to be exactly positioned or the notes will be off key. The only parts he buys are the tuning keys, the metal he cuts for the frets and wood.
They have a small guitar they use in the folk music of the islands. He said that a plain one that size would take about two weeks to build and sell for about $1,600 US. The other end of the spectrum is a full size guitar with fancy inlay and styling. This would take about a month and the cost would depend on the materials used and any special features. It would be a minimum of $3,700. A friend came over and they played a duet. He was quite talented. His playing was crisp and energetic. It was a fun stop.
After the impromptu concert we drove back to the center of town for lunch. We had a buffet at the Chez Loutcha Restaurant. The food was very good and some of the dishes were unusual. One dish had all the ingredients of paella except the main one, rice. Here they used a mixture of beans, a small white one and a larger dark red one. It was different but still very good. They also had a fried fish of a species I don't know. Looked like some sort of perch and tasted like it also. Fried bananas, the small very sweet kind, steak with a thin slice of ham and fried egg on top (bistec a lo porbo (sp?) in Peru), a tray of vegetables with all the usual suspects plus a purplish white starch that was probably taro or manioc, skewers of grilled chicken and vegetables and rice. It was all tasty and nicely presented. For desert they had bowls of fruit, frozen custard or crème and the best flan I've ever tasted. I'm not a big fan of flan (ouch, that even hurt me!) but this one was thick and delicious. I think there was some coconut involved and that might explain why I liked it. Sometimes a flan does not seem completely set to me, too mushy and no texture. This one was almost as thick as a light cheesecake, excellent.
From the restaurant we drove into the foothills to start a cross-island walk to the fishing village of Salmansa. We were dropped off near the top of the ridge of mountains that run down the center of the island like a spine, probably less than 800 feet below the ridge. The path up the rest of the hill was not very steep and fairly easy to negotiate. The views back toward Mindelo were fantastic. Our ship was visible in the harbor off to the left and it was easy to see that the city is located on the rim of a half collapsed volcano caldera. About 270 degrees of the caldera's edge are still above the water creating a very nice natural harbor.
From this vantage point you can see just how arid this island is. There are some small shrub-like trees, they might be manzanitas, in the dry riverbed near the foot of the mountains and that's about it. The blue water contrasting with the dark volcanic rocks make a striking scene. Unfortunately the sun was not in an advantageous position for photography. Late in the day would be perfect. Again, Photoshop will probably be able to make the pictures at least viewable.
As we crested the ridge to start down the other side the winds became gusty and the fastest gusts were very strong. I would guess that the other side of the island gets moisture in the form of low clouds and fog because here on the top of the ridge there are small rock hugging, lichen like plants that do not exist on the other side. I would also guess that the prevailing winds here are from the east and that blows the moisture ashore and to the top of the ridge where the sudden drop in velocity as it crossed the peak causes more moisture to drop out of the fog/clouds here on the ridge. At this point we have probably been climbing for about one-half to two-thirds of a mile.
We are descending the mountain in a dry streambed. Sometimes the path is sandy and smooth but other times we are scrambling over loose rocks and gravel. That makes for tricky going in places. About half way down I spotted what looked like sand dunes in the deepest part of the valley in which we were walking. I asked the guide about them and he said they were indeed small dunes made of sand blown out here from the Great Sahara. Remember we're 350 miles west of the nearest land in Senegal. That's a long way for wind to carry sand. The Great Sahara consists mostly of very fine sand, almost as fine as talc. It's hard to hold two handfuls because it finds ways to run out almost as easily as water. Nevertheless, the wind must carry this fine sand to a great altitude for it to remain aloft for 350 miles. The sight of white sand dunes on a very dark volcanic rock island is pretty remarkable.
Here there are more types of plants due to the increased moisture. Some small leafy plants with tiny white flowers are scattered over the parts of the riverbed that are sedimentary soil. On the edges of the sand dunes there are leggy plants with succulent like leaves on the last few inches of the thin stalks. The stalks are capped with small flowers. As the stalk grows the flowers turn to leaves and the older leaves drop off. Perfect way to conserve water. As we neared the ocean the valley widened and the dunes increased in height and continued right down to the water's edge. Once we had descended to the ocean we walked along the beach to the fishing village where liquid refreshments and a snack were waiting for us. The snacks were small thin doughnuts. They looked like about half inch thick horizontal slices for a cored apple. In fact, at first I thought that's what they were. They had two types, coconut and chocolate. Of course, being a chocoholic I chose coconut. (See you shouldn't get too far ahead of me.) I should have mentioned that only 4 of the 8 people in our van took the walk. The rest rode in the van to the village.
After absorbing a large quantity of water and one half of a doughnut, Diana had the other half, we boarded the vans and took a ride back over the mountain ridge to the port and got back to the ship just before the all aboard time. We were not worried about the fact that our tour ran late as if you are on a tour through the ship; they will not leave without you. If you go off on your own, that's what you are, on your own. They'll give your passport to the port agent and you can catch a flight to the next port of call. They will wait if sailing conditions, tides etc., are such that the departure will not be jeopardized, but they don't have to.
Our entertainer was Juan Pablo Subirana a comic pianist. He's not a comic in the same sense as say Victor Borgia. His music is always played straight and he's excellent. However between songs he will tell little stories and make comic remarks. With his strong Spanish accent, almost everything he says sounds pretty funny and he plays off that fact. Another good show.
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