If you feel that you have seen some of what you about to read, then you would be right since this is was my second visit to Mindelo in under a year – the first being on 24th March 2012 as the penultimate call on the Round South America cruise. Then, like today, the main reason for calling at Mindelo is for bunkering before we begin the long haul down to Cape Town.
I have updated and amended the text and divided this up amongst a number of postings so that I can add some different photos so I hope despite the repetition you will enjoy.
Today we arrived in hazy sunshine with high cloud but a pleasant 70 F. Since I had enjoyed an interesting and picturesque half-day tour of the Island of St Vincente – one of the 3 inhabited islands of the group of 10 islands and five islets that make up the Cape Verdes – in 2012 I decided to take a leisurely stroll around the Baia de Grande Porto into the town. As this name suggests Mindelo boasts a large natural harbour that in the days of steam navigation was developed as a coaling station principally by the British for all routes to Europe, South Africa, India, Australia and South America. At its zenith, in the early 20th Century, about 2,000 ships a year were serviced but the coal stations were finally closed in 1952 with the switch to diesel but Mindelo still functions as a bunkering facility for cruise liners. Today for example we were joined in port by the AIDA Cara, a shade larger then Black Watch with a flamboyant wave logo on the bow. The photo is of Black Watch with the Monte Cara “the Face Mountain” in the hazy background that dominates this grand harbour.
Mindelo’s other claim to fame is as the switching station for the first Trans-Atlantic telegraph cable in 1885. By 1012 Mindelo was considered to be one of the mot important cable stations in the world and as if to remind me of this a large cable laying ship from Alcatel Lucent – the Peter Faber – moored alongside us in the late afternoon.
The colony won independence from Portugal in 1975 and after the overthrow of a communist style government in 1991 established a modern democratic state. The St Vincent Island has few natural resources and owes its development to its strategic position in the path of the Westerly Trade Winds that almost inevitably brought early explorers and traders to its shores. The Portuguese Navigator, Diogo Afonso, discovered the islands in 1460. It later made a very convenient port of call for those working the slave trade from the African coast.
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