Visit to Santo Antao

The island on which Mindelo is on is called Sao Vincente and is nearly the northwesternmost of the islands but there is a much bigger one which as been lurking to the west of our harbour which is called Sao Antao. It is over twice the size of Sao Vincente and much higher. Well, we decided to take the ferry across and explore it. Sadly, there are no suitable harbours where you can take a boat so it is best to visit by ferry. It proved to be one of the highlights of the whole cruise so far.

Just at the entrance to the bay at Mindelo is this remarkable rock called Ilha de Dos Passaros and this was the first chance I had to get a decent (hah!) photo of it.

The ferry takes about an hour to make the six mile crossing and this was quite rough though not too rolly. It would however have been quite a lively sail in Sarah G! Once you arrive, the approved thing is to allow yourself to be commandeered by one of the mini bus dirvers to be shown over the island. We resisted for nearly half an hour as we wanted to walk around the main town of Porto Novo. Eventually, we did succumb and were transferred to a rather battered four wheel drive. The real thing on Santo Antao is an old road that crosses over the island to another town called Ribeira Grande. This road is cobbled and takes in some incredible scenery. The two biggest “sights” are a huge volcanic crater. The road passes round the rim and you can look down nearly 400 meters to see crops being cultivated in the bottom. The vulcanicity has long ceased on this island of course. A few kilometers on from the crater and you start descending to the west coast of the island. Here the rock is mainly sedimentary but with huge volcanic dykes intruding into the rock which makes for very steep sided ridges with almost dry rivers at the bottom. The road. The road follows one these ridges. The photos completely fail to do it justice as you cannot portray the vertical drop on each side of the low wall at each side. According to our guide, it was built over 20 years during the sixties and seventies. They have now built a new road that goes twice the distance round the coast but takes half the time.

Approaching Porto Novo

Once ashore, we found this incomparable sign on a beach bar.

Our guide proved to be quite a character and took us to his village where we met a lot of relatives as well as being treated to a really good lunch provided by another relative. We also got to sample lots of the local rum which is called grogue. I can't say that I was overwhelmed with it. Good spirits really need to be matured in casks for a while so as to soften them out and impart some distinctive flavours. Still, grogue was produced locally and was sold to us in used mineral water bottles. Matthew took some back to the UK with him.

Here are a selection of some of the 88 photos I took.

A typical view at the top of the mountains.

Audrey, Matthew and our guide Kykie

An artful tree just as we began our descent to the western side of the island.

Where I am stood here there is a drop of several thousand feet either side of the road. It is almost impossible to do justice to the scenery with my lack of skills behind the camera unfortunately.

The wifi here at the marina is a bit slow and also charges on a per MB basis so I will wait till I can get somewhere else to upload more photos.
All in all the day was one of the best ones of the cruise and I would thoroughly recommend a visit to these islands either by boat or by plane.

Finally: Happy New Year to all readers.