April 4, 2025

Today’s version of colonial takeover and pillaging is brought to you by the Portuguese! We arrived at 7:00AM to Praia, Ilha de Santiago, Cabo Verde (the city of Praia on the island of Santiago in the country of Cape Verde, for you English speakers). Located about 350 miles off the coast of Senegal on the west coast of the African continent, Cape Verde (CV) is a volcanic archipelago of 10 islands, with Praia being on the largest island of Santiago and the capital. The dock where we anchored appeared minute by the standards of the other harbors at which we have previously moored with maybe 25 containers or less peppering the wharf. It had been foggy coming in, but as soon as the gangway dropped, the skies parted to reveal another sunny day and about 75F.

I had booked us on a 4 hour excursion called “Praia and Cidade Velha” which sounded interesting enough for a couple who hadn’t heard of CV until about 6 months ago. We peaked over the railing of our balcony to see multiple white 20 passenger buses lined up below and were grateful that they appeared fairly modern. The tour description described the transportation as being “basic” and not to count on air-conditioning, so we were relieved to see vehicles that were a cut above a school bus. However, they still didn’t have air conditioning.

We filed off the ship and onto our bus where we were greeted by our guide for the day named “Joe”. Sporting a New England Patriots ball cap, speaking with a heavy Boston accent (“how ya doin’?”) and the skin color of café au lait, he didn’t exactly fit the bill of whom we were expecting to guide our tour. Regardless, with his infectious grin and constant joking he did a great job making us feel right at home. He started off by giving a little history about himself and then about his country. His parents came from one of the outer islands and were “imported” to Angola in the 60’s to work in the fields. He was born in that country but they were all able to return to CV when civil war broke out there in the ‘70s.

He described the history of islands as being uninhabited until some Portuguese guy discovered them in the mid-1400’s and claimed them for his country. They started cultivating and growing crops and developed a tidy business as being kind of the rest area for all the ships that were puttering around trying to conquer their own colonies in those days. Even Christopher Columbus stopped by for a rest and a chance to go to a local church. It wasn’t long before they came upon the idea of human trafficking and with the help of continental African tribes who wanted to get rid of their rivals, hundreds of thousands were captured and sent into the willing hands of the Portuguese on CV. Hence the island became the center of the slave trade for the next 300+ years shipping humans off to Brazil, Barbados, the Caribbean and of course, the fledgling USA to work primarily in sugar cane.

After the bottom fell out of the slave business in the early 1800’s, the Portuguese lost interest in the colony but hung onto power until the country got their independence in the 1970’s. Of course, the usual suspects tried to grab CV for themselves during those centuries and as a result it is a very diverse race of people, culture and music. Now they say there are more Cape Verdeans in the USA than there are in CV with its population of less than 1,000,000. But thanks to influx of money from the Germans, Chinese and Americans, the little nation is making a comeback with the greatest source of revenue coming from tourism. The national language is Portuguese with the spoken language primarily being Crioulo or Creole – a combination of Portuguese and West African languages. And this can vary significantly from island to island in the chain of ten.

Praia, the capital city into which we were now driving was not the original center of commerce after the discovery of CV. The Cidade Velha (city of Velha), our next destination was the real first stopping place and where most of the slave sales took place. It was also the place where Columbus went to Mass.

Our first stop was on the “Plateau” in Praia which looms a couple of hundred of feet above the harbor where our ship had moored. Apparently, it didn’t take the Portuguese long to figure out with all the slave trade and money changing hands that pirates were not soon to follow. So they relocated their capital to this tableland where they could much more easily defend themselves from marauders. We parked near the fortress which is now home of the CV army (all 1500 of them) and wandered around for a bit. We went into the pedestrian zone and center of town that contained the market where most of the action was.

Back on the bus we started on our 35-minute drive to Velha, passing a beautiful University (apparently a “gift” from the Chinese). The mountain scenery was really spectacular, all volcanic and very rugged with a couple of huge volcanos in the distance. Scrawny trees covered the landscape which Joe named but I can’t remember. Anyway, they hold the water in the ground, prevent erosion, are very bitter so the animals won’t eat them and repel mosquitos. Thousands of them had been planted (another “gift” from the Chinese) and appeared to be thriving in a very hostile environment.

Before descending into Velha town, we stopped at another large fortress that had just been rebuilt, we assumed for tourism and its new status as an UNESCO World Heritage site. All the cannons were aimed at the harbor below which was the graveyard for countless sunken pirate ships. Joe said they were attempting to launch a dive center there that would cater to people who wanted to explore the wrecks underwater.

After a short visit to the fortress and great photo ops, we drove down a narrow, rocky road to the old town to wander around. We walked up “Banana Row” which is the oldest street on the island dating from the 1500’s and which was lush and green among the stone houses. The center plaza of town down by the waterfront was marked by a spire where humans were humiliated and sold for hundreds of years. There was a church with a massive baptismal font nearby where the enslaved were baptized because reportedly they could fetch a larger price if they had been christened. (Don’t ask me, I just write this stuff)

It was indeed a beautiful place but with such a history, we were admittedly a bit somber visiting it. We found our short stopover to CV enlightening yet sobering as so many of our visits to island nations and South Africa have been on this trip. We wish them well as they enter a new era of prosperity in their new tourism ventures! It is most assuredly a very beautiful place.

Praia, Cape Verde

Sea Day #8 Atlantic Ocean

Sea Day #6 Atlantic Ocean