São Vicente and Santo Antão: serenaded by Cesária Évora
Full photo albums for Santo Antão and São Vicente.
Sunday 27 – Tuesday 29 November 2016.
When planning my time in Cape Verde I knew I would go to Santiago to see what information on Antonio I could find, then Boa Vista to see where he was born – at least the general area. The thing that pushed me to come to São Vicente was the view from the front verandah of the place I stayed. From there it was about getting more of a feel for Cape Verde: the topography and people vary from island to island.
Mindelo is the home of Morna music, and performer Cesária Évora the most world renown. Sadly when she and her band came to Australia in 2008, she became unwell and was not able to perform at WOMADelaide. Her band played and were fantastic. She recovered and continued to perform until 2010 when she had a heart attack that required surgery. Four months later it was announced she was retiring due to ongoing health issues. Cesária passed away over a year later in December 2011.
In order to fly to Sao Vicente, I spent the day flying from Sal Rei to Praia to Mindelo, arriving early evening. While checking in I asked the manager about tours to Santo Antão and São Vicente as I hadn’t been able to find anything online. He organised tours for the next two days.
Early the following morning I was at the ferry terminal for the hour trip across to Santo Antão. I arrived in Porto Novo and located the guide, Lenin, and driver, Rosendo for the tour. We headed up over the mountains.
A lot of cruises ships come to Mindelo with tourists heading to Santo Antão to go hiking over the ranges, quite popular for the energetic tourists. Because of this many of the guides speak multiple languages, with Portuguese (official language of Cape Verde), Spanish, French and German common. English may not be as common. Lenin’s English was way better than my non-existent language skills, but we did struggle some to communicate. As we took off from the port, Lenin split his conversation between myself and Rosendo. While they were chatting away, I was taking photos as we climbed above Porto Novo, finally asking if we could stop to take photos. Lenin advised they have a safe place up ahead where they would stop. This is what I saw from the scenic lookout:
I laughed, and was glad I took the snaps from the car. We are above the clouds. The roads over the ranges are cobbled, and while rough to drive over, they are well maintained.
While stopped some people who live in the area came up to Lenin, showing him some low denomination US$. They were asking him what they were. It would seem some tourists had come through and had given this to these people (maybe asked if they could take their photo). It is a nice gesture, but tourists don’t realise that it may not be easy for these people to change the money into usable currency. It certainly made me think. I had been able to buy things in shops using Euro, but this are farming folk who didn’t even know what it was that they had been given.
We headed to Cova de Paul, an extinct volcano that is now fertile pastures. We walked down to the caldera, then heading to the point were we could look across to Ribeira Grande, where we were heading. This is the point where trekkers head off on one of the main walks. The lowest point of Cova de Paul is 1,166 metres and the highest point of the rim is approx. 1,500 metres.
Luck is not on our side today as we are again above the clouds. Lenin let out an exasperated sigh when he realised I was missing a second spectacular view. I didn’t mind as I assumed it was a common sight (looking online I found other images similar to mine). Who else can say they were walking amongst the clouds?
While writing this blog I found the playlist of James Eastwood, who travelled to Santo Antão December 2017 with his partner. If you are interested in trekking, they did 5 walks around the northern parts of Santo Antão. They did a lot better than I did!
The first walk they did started at Cova de Paul. I didn’t go down the 3km walk that drops 1km down the mountainside. And this video also shows the view that I didn’t see due to cloud.
The mountain ridges look sharp, almost a knife like edge. It was interesting to see clouds creeping across the range when there is lots of cloud on one side and clear on the other.
We made our way back to the van and headed off, stopping a few times for more photos. I was interested in how some of the mountains were terraced and how most available space was utilized for crops.
Finally we made it to Ribeira Grande, on the north coast of Santo Antão. Lunch at Divin’ Art was delicious, a bit of a look around before heading off, first west to Ponta do Sol, then taking the bitumen coastal road back to Porto Novo. Here we see the mountains as they meet the sea.
I would have liked to stop a bit more to take photos on this last part, but when travelling on my own, having people standing around while I take photos feels a bit weird and I end up either rushing the photos or not bothering.
Lenin and Rosendo in the front of the van, as we headed back to the ferry. Cesária Évora played throughout the day, which I wholeheartedly support!
The ferry back to Mindelo was uneventful.
Bom dia Mindelo!
The next day was my last day in Cape Verde. I did book the room for the night so I could leave my bag in the room and clean up before heading off for my flights.
After breakfast and photos from the verandah, I headed out for the day. Compared to Santo Antão, São Vicente is not as dramatic; it is still hilly with Monte Verde roughly in the middle of the island.
We stopped a few times on the way up Monte Verde, with differing views across the island: Mindelo to the north west and Calhau to the south west.
We headed to Baia das Gatas, paddled in the relatively calm water, wandered across the sand dunes before making our way to Calhau, the volcano on the beach. Such different landscapes on the one island.
We stopped early for lunch, before taking the road east, back towards Mindelo, taking the road that passes the airport to go to Praia de São Pedro – where white and volcanic sand mix together.
My driver was struggling to pad the day tour, and I said I was okay to head back to Mindelo. After dropping my stuff back at the hotel, I headed into town: checking out one of the churches, the farmers market and Palácio do Povo to see the Cesária Évora exhibition.
What a lovely way to end my tour of Cape Verde. I headed back to the hotel, showered and finalised my packing for my evening flight back to Santiago with a wait until 2am for the flight to Lisbon, then the connecting flight to Miami. A long journey was ahead of me.
