March 29 – Cape Verde (now referred to as Cabo Verde)

Cape Verde is a small island nation in the Atlantic almost directly west of Senegal.  There are 10 islands with only one that is uninhabited.  We anchored just outside of Porto Novo on the island of Santo Antão in the northwest end of the string of islands.  The islands remained under Portuguese control until they gained independence in 1975.  The islands were uninhabited until discovered by the Portuguese in the 15^th century. 

We have an all day tour where we are heading off into the mountains in about 20 four wheel drive vehicles holding 4 guests each. 

The islands are volcanic in origin and our island is very mountainous and has a very rugged terrain. They don’t seem to get a lot of rain, with the rainy season being August through October, but even then there is little rain. 

We had a few stops for photos.  The countryside was beautiful and stark and rugged.

There were a few settlements and a few isolated houses.

We eventually ended up at a beautiful black sand beach for lunch.

There were quit a number of small, blue jellyfish that had washed up along the beach.

Then it was back into the vehicles for further bumpy, gravely, mountain driving.  We did occasionally see terraces of farms.  

There appeared to be some reservoirs where they had captured rain water for use.  However, everything really looked quite parched except where there was obvious irrigation taking place.

There were some really great views of the coastline from high up on the mountains.

After cresting the high passes the landscape further down the mountain in this section was a little less rugged.

When coming back over the mountains we had some views of St. Vincent Island in the distance.

Also got a nice view of St. Vincent's from the ship.

We didn’t have time to visit the little town of Porto Novo but what we saw during the drive back to the ship showed it to be a pretty and colorful town.

The entertainment tonight was another very good ventriloquist, Mark Merchant.

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More Photos of Cape Verde
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