Mindelo, Cabo Verde — 2024

     We docked in the bay near Mindelo on the morning of May 3.  Dating to the late 18th century, Mindelo and the other islands in this archipelago were settled by the Portuguese, and today Cabo Verde (Cape Verde Islands) is an independent country.  It was a beautiful day and there was quite a nice view of the town from our veranda. 

     In the bay was a conical rock island that has been turned into a lighthouse.  And on a mountainside on shore was an old fortress.

     We had visited here once before, in 2022:  https://baderjournal.com/2023/04/26/mindelo-cabo-verde-2022/ .  On that occasion we walked around the town (population about 70,000) on our own with Bill and Robert.  When nearing the end of a long voyage like this one it would take something pretty special to entice us to book yet another bus excursion and nothing available here was on that level for us.  We were scheduled for an early departure anyway, so we would have had to be back to the ship before 2:30, which would be a restricted time for an excursion.  So we went into the town with Bill and Robert again and walked around.  It is a nice enough city that doing this again was still enjoyable.  There was a shuttle bus from the pier to the middle of the downtown seafront that dropped us off near a large statue in the water of what appears to be a sailfish.  Before boarding the shuttle, though, we debarked from the ship near a long open building housing pipes that had a series of intermittent walls painted by the crews of visiting ships.

     Mindelo is a a very nice walking town, open and airy with buildings painted a variety of bright colors and many flowers.  Some areas could benefit from a little more maintenance but that is true of many, if not most, cities in our experience.  We walked past the old (closed) public library, which has an impressive mural on one side of Cesária Évora, Mindelo’s favorite folk singer, who died in 2011.  We passed the shocking pink People’s Palace, built in 1874, and also what appeared to be an outdoor storage area for floats used in Mindelo’s celebrated Carnaval.

     Probably the most striking feature on the waterfront is a three story tower built in 1921, modeled on the Tower of Belem in Lisbon.  It houses a museum but we just went inside and admired the view of the bay through the waterfront door.

     The marketplace has a number of vendors, some outside and some under cover, selling everything from wood carvings to baskets to clothing.  Of special interest were several large blue and white Portuguese style tile displays on the walls of the market buildings, depicting (we think) some historic scenes of this area.

     We walked along for a while, then went into the Mindelo Cultural Center (Centro Cultural de Mindelo) facing the waterfront.  Inside were some craft shops and, lo and behold, the public library!  We knew its old location was closed but didn’t know where (or if) there was a new one.  Robert stumbled upon it here by happenstance.  It seems much smaller than the previous location, probably with a lot fewer books, so hopefully a larger home will be found eventually.  Still, with its second floor on a raised platform inside the high ceilinged room, it was an interesting space.  A variety of artworks was mounted in the building (outside the library) and, as at the tower, there was a nice bay view out the front door.  While we were resting up to leave the building Robert took pictures of both of us.

     As mentioned above we had an early departure today so we took the shuttle back to the ship to be in plenty of time.  Before boarding we took pictures of some of the crew painted walls on the building across the pier.

     That was the end of our visit to the last foreign port on this long voyage.  We set sail in mid afternoon for our final port before reaching Florida again.  It would take four sea days to get there.  One last look from our veranda before we departed.