Tuesday May 26, 2026
Hi Folks! We were docked today in the port city of Mindelo on the island of Sao Vicente within the 10 island archipelago of Cape Verde off the coast of Africa. It was founded in 1460 by the Portuguese. Mindelo is the cultural capital of the cluster of ten volcanic islands. Portuguese is the official language but most speak Creole, which is a mix of African and Portuguese.
Believe it or not, there are over a million Cape Verde folks who now live in the US, with the largest concentration in the Boston area. Over 15% of their economy comes from those Boston based people sending money back to their relatives in Cape Verde. They will be in the World Cup for the first time this year.
In 1837 the British came and took over the island and established it as a critical trading location. In 1956 Amilcar Cabral created a secret political party to start discussing independence. In 1963 the war for independence started and they finally got their independence on July 5th, 1975. In 1991 they had their first free election and became a democratic country. The year 2000 started their first real tourism and they’ve flourished since then.
Today we did a tour around part of the island. We stopped in the center of town and did some shopping at the local craft market. We drove to the top of Monte Verde, the highest mountain on the island at 2,400 feet high. We went up early in the morning so it was still foggy but the narrow and curvy cobblestone road to the top was a little crazy! No guardrails… Yikes!
But we made it up and down safely and also stopped along the ocean front road for pics. Did you know all their yellow sand was blown across the Atlantic Ocean from the dust storms coming off the African Sahara desert? Now that’s really crazy! The people were really friendly and the port was a nice change from some of the very poor locations along the east coast of Africa.
We chilled in the late afternoon once back onboard. I’ll do another update tonight.
The Wandering Italian 