Dave and Val's Travel Blog: Grand Africa Cruise

Cruise Day 62

Saturday, December 10, 2022

"Travel is not reward for working, it’s education for living.” -- Unknown

Today our port is Praia on the island of Santiago in Cape Verde. I had heard of Cape Verde, but until this cruise I wasn’t quite sure where it was. It turns out it’s a group of islands off the west coast of Africa with the nearest island being 350 miles west of Senegal.


Praia (the red marker) is almost due east of Dakar (blue marker on left). The blue marker in the upper left corner is Mindelo where we'll be tomorrow.

Cape Verde is a former Portuguese colony that is made up of ten islands and five islets covering about 1550 square miles with a population of 562,000. It gained its independence from Portugal in 1975 and after a rocky start, it is known today for its economic and political stability. Praia, where we are docked today, is the capital of Cape Verde and has a population of 160,000.

The island of Santiago and Praia, where we are docked today is on the southern coast.

The flag of Cape Verde.

After a good night’s sleep, I woke up very well rested and feeling much better, so our day ashore was a go. This was a ship excursion called “Cultural Praia” and we had to meet in the theater at 8:45 to check in. There was hardly anyone in the showroom when we arrived, so I guess all the other tours had left earlier although there weren’t many ship tours offered for this port.

We were on the bus and on our way by 9:00 and headed into town from the port. The bus was a minibus and there were enough empty seats that we could spread out a little. The only problem was the air conditioner didn’t work. It was supposed to be in the low 80’s today which isn’t too bad, and the humidity is a little less than we have been experiencing on the mainland, so we made do without air conditioning. The bus did get a little warm, but the windows opened so when we were driving, we got a cooling breeze on us.

This tour turned out to be more of a walking tour than we thought, but that was OK as the guide set a reasonable pace that allowed us to take in our surroundings without being rushed from one spot to another. After being dropped off in the center of town we were led to the Ethnographic Museum that was small and mildly interesting, but what was more interesting was that to get there you walked down one of the main streets in town that had been closed off to form a pedestrian mall.

A picture from the bus as we drove from the port into town.

The Ethnographic Museum

This street had been turned into a pedestrian mall.

After the museum we continued our stroll down the mall area and visited a couple of shops. Our next stop was the vegetable market that was a two-story building crammed with all kinds of vegetables, fruits, nuts and herbs. This was a Saturday morning, so the market was very busy with a lot of shopping and of course, bargaining going on. There were people everywhere and we felt a little odd walking through the throng with our cameras and other obvious tourist gear, but no one seemed to care. There was also a fish and meat market, but different from what we usually find in our stores as the fish was fresh off the fishing boats, no filets or pieces, you bought the whole fish. The meat was similar although there was less of it. One thing that caught our eyes was a cooler full of small (baby?) pigs; they were skinned, but otherwise intact. We wondered if maybe they were cooked whole on a rotisserie.

The entrance to the vegetable market.

At the end of the pedestrian mall was Praça Alexandre Albuquerque, the town square, an iconic gathering place for the people of the island of Santiago. There was some sort of event going on as there was music and speeches going on. Also in the square we saw the statue of Diogo Gomes who discovered the Cape Verde Islands in 1460.

Praça Alexandre Albuquerque

After passing by the square we went into a building that had an upstairs terrace with great views of the city. I have no memory of what that building was for, maybe it was just a place to get a view of the city. Whatever it was, here are some pictures I took.

We continue our walk and saw the Palace of the President; it was an impressive building with beautiful grounds. We also walked past the oldest building in Praia, the Jaime Mota Barracks that dates back to 1826 and is still in use today.


The presidential palace

We had some nice views of the harbor as we walked ...

and of our ship docked in the distance.

The Jaime Mota Barracks is the oldest building in Praia.

They are still used today.

We continued our walk with views of the waterfront and our ship off in the distance. After that it was back on the bus, and we were off to view the Cruz de Papa Monument commemorating the pope’s visit to Cape Verde. The monument is above Quebra Canela Beach where we were able to take a break and have a drink on the shaded terrace overlooking the coast below.

The Quebra Canela Beach area.

We had a nice spot with a great view to cool off and have something to drink.

After that, we drove to the Sucupira Market that was supposed to be a crafts market, but it didn’t look like it to us. The part we saw was mostly clothing, shoes and things for locals. The market and the area around were very busy as it was Saturday and everyone was out and about.

Inside the Sucupira Market.

We came out the side entrance to the market and had to walk up and to the left to get to our bus.

Some of the action outside the market.

We were a little surprised to see a goat near where our bus was parked.

It was a large place and our guide said to stay with him, but someone wandered off and we had to wait while he tried to find her. He never did and finally sent us back to the bus where we found the missing lady, she had decided to come back without telling anyone. We had to wait for our guide to return who was still out looking for the lady, but finally we were on our way back to the ship. He was very relieved as it might have cost him his job if she wasn’t found.

Our guide was quite interesting as his father was a Cape Verde counsel employee and he had lived in various places around the world including the US and Italy. We got back to the ship right on time and were glad to be back in the air conditioning as the day had gotten warm and the humidity had increased.

This was taken from the bus. Our guide had told us that street vendors weren't allowed in the city, so either that is ignored or there are exceptions.

We really enjoyed today’s tour, but we had done a lot of walking so after getting back we rested a while before getting some lunch. We spent the afternoon relaxing and catching up on our e-mail and I wrote up today’s tour on the blog. Our balcony was in the shade, so we also spent quite a bit of time out there reading and relaxing.

We went up on the Lido deck for the sail away and enjoyed the balmy evening. We stayed up there until just before dinner and then came down and got ready before heading off to the dining room. The casino was again kind to us; even though we didn’t win much, we did well enough not to have to use all of our evening’s gambling allotment.