Picto Diary - 05 December 2018 - Cape Verde
Above: 7:00 AM. Breakfast view as Regent Seven Seas Explorer nears berth at impulse power. Mindelo, Sao Vicente Island, Cape Verde.
I'm all alone on the Verandah breakfast deck as I take this image on the Samsung Note 9 at 2x telephoto.
If any world destination was heretofore "out of sight, out of mind," Cape Verde, an island country of 500 thousand population, would have been very high on the list.
Cape Verde is an independent African country of ten or so islands, all but one inhabited, in the eastern Atlantic Ocean five hundred miles off the coast of Senegal on the African mainland. Formerly, it was a way point, a coal station, for pre Suez Canal shipping rounding the Cape Of Good Hope to the Indian Ocean and further east.
Language: Creole, Portuguese — in Mindelo, Cape Verde.
Above: Street and ship scene. Mindelo, Sao Vincente Island, Cape Verde. 05 January 2018.
Seen here are the old Portuguese influence of color and architecture juxtaposed against the modern ship. A Hollywood professional photog friend "liked" this photo on Facebook. I'm feeling good about my compositional capabilities here, what?
Note the crumbling building left (shades of Havana) and the pink curtains against the yellow façade at right.
All with a floating luxury hotel at rear to accentuate the absurd.
Above: Mindelo Vegetable Market. Mindelo, Cape Verde. 05 December 2018.
Guide Lito says these vegetables are grown on other Cape Verde islands. Mindelo's island, Sao Vincente, with only four inches of rain per year, is too dry to grow anything but aloe, desert palm, and acacia.
TIMDT observes the market.
Above: De Praia Grande. (Big Beach). — at São Vicente, Cape Verde. 05 December 2018
Lava field in the foreground.
Anyone wanting to out beach the next person could start here and feel reasonably sure that he would have won the contest.
The island is mostly rock. Limestone interspersed with lava fields. There are active volcanoes on the island. The last eruption was in 1973.
Above: Bishop, TIMDT, Bridge, and Bond. Plaia Grande (Big Beach). Island of Sao Vicente. Cape Verde. 05 December 2018.
Above: Bishop. Plaia Grande (Big Beach). Sao Vicente Island. Cape Verde. 05 December 2018.
No... Bishop.... no...!!!! Don't do it! You have a life to live!!!!\\
Image hat tip: Bond
Above: Regent Seven Seas Explorer berthed at Mindelo, San Vicente Island, Cape Verde. 05 December 2018.
Image, thru mist and haze, from 3000 feet Monte Verde. — at São Vicente, Cape Verde.
We rode in a small bus up a sometimes very narrow cobbled road to the top of Green Mountain.
I was a bit nervous. The grades were up to 18%. All that stood between us and the bottom was a working transmission, a gear shift, brakes in who knows what condition, and a driver who, though perhaps certified by the cruise line, could have been drunk the night before, a substance abuser, or someone with a serious health problem. This was a new country... decidedly third world in impression. Do they do vehicle inspections here? What do you have to study to become a professional driver?
Before our ride started, I even walked around the bus and checked all the tires. They looked OK.... a lot better than the tires on the small plane we flew in in the Gobi desert in Mongolia in 1999. You could see the fabric on the plane's tires.
Anyway, years of using shaky third world transportation had made me wary and anxious about transport.
During the late '70's TIMDT and Mwah (sic) made a similar bus climb, that time on a dirt road and in a smaller bus, to Maccu Piccu. On the descent, the driver took a curve above a precipice too hot and slammed on the brakes. The front wheel was inches from going over the top when he finally stopped the vehicle.
Each time today's driver down shifted as the grade increased my heart stopped. The pause between second and first while rolling slowly on an 18% grade was only a half second long... but it seemed like a minute. At that point there were only the vehicle's brakes to stop a roll back should the transmission fail for one reason or another. And, how were those brakes, anyway?
At the top of Green Mountain we cruise tourists got out to take in the vistas of the surrounding islands and the city of Mendelo.. The vista occluded by mists and wispy clouds blowing from our rear.. from the northeast. The neighboring island (we were on Sao Vicente Island), Santo Antao, only three kilometers away, was barely visible. We could see the outlines of the Santo Antao's four thousand foot peaks.
The city of Mindelo, seen in the image, was not visible at all for most of the ten minutes we observed from the summit. Occasionally, the clouds and the mist would break, and the city... and the ship.... would appear... as is the case with the image above.
One can see in the image how dry the terrain is. There are only four inches of rain a year on Sao Vincente. As we drove through the interior of the island I was reminded of driving through the Navajo Indian Reservation in northeastern Arizona. Substitute African acacia trees, aloe plants, and desert palm trees for the Arizona scrub and the two regions looked a lot alike.... including the meager, hard scrabble looking housing.
We could see that the locals were attempting to grow corn... but, the yield on the scruffy stalks could not have been very much.
Our bus guide, Lito, said most of the produce on Sao Vincente was imported from other islands. All other goods had to be imported from outside Cape Verde.
Per Lito: Unemployment at 25%. Growing number of Europeans coming to retire inexpensively. Ten universities on the island. Prospective doctors went to Bolivia or Cuba to medical school. Tourism a growing source of island income. 35 cruise ships come into Cape Verde each year.