Mindelo, Cape Verde Islands
Today, we arrived in Mindelo, on the Isle of Sao Vincente (St Vincent) in the Cape Verde Islands.
The islands are located only a few miles off the coast of Africa. Having visited several times before, I think it’s fair to say that Mindelo divides people; they either really like it or they hate it… we rather like the place, but have seen a number of changes over the years.
The tour we were on today was ‘A Glimpse of the Island’; our small 26-seater coaches being two of about a ten or so, all doing the same excursion. My coach started out by heading for Mount Verde, the highest point on the island. The roads are sturdily built, but are teeth-chatteringly, neck-crunchingly uncomfortable to drive along. We bounced along for miles as we left the town centre, rising to a point some way below the summit that afforded us some impressive, if windy, views in all directions; in one direction, we could see the far-off town of Mindelo, with the Magellan parked in its bay. Turning 180-degrees from that view would mean that you were looking up at the distinctive flat-topped summit of Mount Verde itself. In the other two directions, we were looking down across Catfish Bay towards the other islands on the Capoe Verde group, or across the interior of the island, which looked like an alien, or vaguely lunar, landscape.
From here, we bounced our way uncomfortably down to Catfish Bay, which hosts an international music festival once a year. When the week-long festival is on, I’m certain it must be an interesting and vibrant place to visit. Today, however, it was empty and quite boring. The beach is nice enough, but it lacked any distinctive features, and behind us, the small village of Catfish Bay consists mostly of bland-looking hotels and holiday homes… quiet and deserted, and lacking in any character whatsoever.
Shore excursions vary enormously, from extremely boring and with little interest to us, to extremely interesting and positively memorable. I think it would be true to say that a potentially boring tour can be made surprisingly interesting if it is hosted by a really good guide. A good guide will engage with the passengers and generally entertain them in an interesting and informative way as the tour rattles along. A good guide will care about their group, making concessions for those less able and altering it slightly to maintain maximum attention. Unfortunately, my guide today had none of those qualities. When we arrived in Catfish Bay, he didn’t tell us much about it at all. He encouraged everyone out of the coach without telling them what they were supposed to do, or how long they had to do it. On several occasions throughout the tour, I could sense passengers becoming quite frustrated with his lack of decent guiding skills, or willingness to connect with them. He was a bit rubbish, frankly.
After another half hour of bouncing around, we finally arrived back in Mindelo, where the walking section of the tour began. Our guide led us into a small museum, and showed us the toilets, but then failed to explain whether or not we were also supposed to be looking at the museum itself; we waited for absolutely ages, with a few people making use of the loos, before being led through one room of the museum back out into the street, with very little explanation of why…
From here, we were driven to the market, where he led us all upstairs to the balcony, only to, almost immediately, walk back down the stairs to wander through the market. A good guide would have recognised that there were at least two people who had cronic walking difficulties, and suggested that the climb to the balcony was optional, and probably better to stay downstairs. One of the ladies who walked with a stick admitted to me that if she’d known that we were climbing up to the balcony just to come straight back down again, she almost certainly wouldn’t have bothered.
Our trip into the church was fleeting and by the time we arrived at the open-air craft market, he told us that there wasn’t time for the 15 minutes free time we should get; instead, we had to get back on the bus to be taken to the Pont D’Agua resort for final refreshments…
Drinks and nibbles always go down well, and are a great way to finish a tour if you want to make sure the punters go away with good memories. Because all the coaches had arrived at the same time, it was utter bedlam, but the refreshments seemed to go down well, and the dancing and music definitely kept everyone’s spirits up.
The excursion coaches arrived back at the quayside at just gone 12:30. With all the same passengers queuing to get back on the ship for lunch, and all-aboard time being 3:30pm, for sailaway at 4pm, Tracey and I decided to head back into town to grab a few photographs while we had the chance (it was going to take us easily 15-20 minutes to get back on board, and lunch time in the bistro would be manic, meaning we probably wouldn’t have enough time left for ourselves after battling the queues).
We caught the free shuttle back into the town, took photos of the old boats on the harbour beach (for me to paint up from), and had a drink in a small cafe where we could also use some free wi-fi, before finally walking back to the ship.
Sadly, we returned only to discover that Peter and Linda Crush, who run the Uklele lessons, have had to leave the ship and fly home for personal reasons. Not good.
Our 4pm sailaway didn’t happen until gone 5pm due to a delay in taking on fuel. Eventually, however, we backed out of our parking spot and headed South-West, on our marathon 5-day crossing of the Atlantic. Next stop… Brazil!
