We may have led you to believe that we do nothing in Mindelo but enjoy the various views. And that is not a totally misleading impression! But, against awesome odds, we have managed to get out on the town just a bit. Here are our six picks for must-see sights in Mindelo.
Hike Monte Verde (or Drive up)
This mountain is the primary geographic feature on Saõ Vicente, taking up a good chunk of the island’s real estate. It’s about a 4 mile/6 km from Mindelo, along a windy road with lots of switchbacks. We wish we could tell you we hiked up there to earn these views, but we did this early on, when Laurel was still recovering from her sailing-related sprained ankle/pegleg. So we took a taxi up, near sunset on a lovely but cloudy day. It gave us a sweep of the whole island, including several lovely little villages and beaches. There is a chance we’ll make the trip again before we go, but we are likelier to spend our remaining time with the final item on our list.
Fish Market and Municipal (Vegetable) Market
This might not be that much fun if you are not cooking any of your own food. But it’s still certainly worth a look. Both are busy, lively places, with eager entrepreneurs hawking their wares. We love wandering up and down, picking our way among the beseeching cats as we look for a bargain. Not that they are hard to find: a recent lunch was these astonishing tuna steaks, running about $3.75 a pound /E7 a kilo. If the fish get to be too much for you, you can hang out on the pier waiting for boats to come in. As far as we can tell, both this and the vegetable market are family affairs. The men bring the goods and the women sell them.
Cesaria Evora museum
We’ve said a lot about this diva already in our post on the music of Cabo Verde. There’s also a small museum in a house that the city gave to her, which has some of her possessions and a listening station. Our favourite part, maybe, was the patio upstairs, which was explicitly designated for smokers (she was a lifelong smoker). It’s not a big place, but it’s full of love. Visiting gives you a very clear sense of how important she was and is to the people of Mindelo.
Maritime Museum
The Museo do Mar located in a wee replica of Lisbon’s Torre de Belem, is a museum of shipwrecks. It’s small but fascinating, including the map of all the shipwrecks that have been discovered in the area, during a period spanning four centuries. We loved the ivory tusks and the various appurtenances of civilised ship life, including port glasses, mustache trimmers, and the like. Love is not the right word for how we felt about the chains, used to shackle enslaved West Africans together during the unspeakable passage to the new world, but it was nonetheless very much worth seeing.
Listen to Live Music
We’ve loved being able to do this a couple of times a week! The music scene in Mindelo is perfect for us because it usually happens with dinner. We love this kind of efficient multitasking, and it also means that performances begin a lot sooner than they otherwise would, say 7:30 or 8 instead of 9 or 10. Plus, there’s dinner, one of our favourite parts of any day.
Praia Laghina
This is the beach you’ve seen out our window. John goes running here; we walk along it sometimes. There are a couple of eateries with views of the beach, and one of them rents lounge chairs. This is not really one of the sights in Mindelo; most of the time, if you’re like us, you will simply be sipping your fruity drink and sighing, eyes closed. But when you do open them, the views are fantastic. And it’s only fair to mention it, since we spend a good percentage of our time on or near the beach.
