We drove out of Praia but only about six miles. Here we visited Cidade Velha, the oldest settlement in Cape Verde and its former capital. It was founded in 1462 and was formerly called Ribeira Grande. One of its best features and reason for being was its location at the mouth of the river Ribeira Grande de Santiago. Having an abundance of water made this a key port in the early days of colonization. Cidade Velha was the first colonial settlement in the tropics.

I'll put Cidade Velha into some perspective for you. Vasco da Gama stopped here on his way to India in 1497. Christopher Columbus stopped here in 1498 on his third voyage to the Americas. Ferdinand Magellan stopped here in 1522 on his final leg of the survivors circumnavigation of the world. And of course, I've already mentioned that Charles Darwin stopped here in 1823 on his voyage of the Beagle.

The Portuguese established this town, so naturally their colonial rivals, the French and English, wanted it. Sir Francis Drake attacked and raided Santiago in 1585, so between 1587 and 1593, Portugal's Philip I built Forte Real de Sao Filipe. It was built high above the town on a plateau from stones imported from Portugal. As I stood at the fort, it seemed doubtful to me that it could really protect the settlement. Our local guide said that when the town came under fire, the people would run up the mountain to the fort. It evidently didn't work out that great and they eventually moved the capital to Praia. The fort went into decay in more recent times but the walls have been rebuilt by UNESCO. They only rebuilt the walls, nothing else. You can see a view from the fort looking over the town below. And by the way, Cidade Velha is Portuguese for "old city."

The next photo is to one side of the fort. You can see that this area of Santiago is a series of plateaus with deep gullies between them. You can also notice that they are doing lots of farming down in the valley and seem to have plenty of water, the original draw for this location.

Next is a photo of Cidade Velha taken from the fort.

We drove down to the town. It's not very big. We walked the oldest part of town. The next two photos were taken on "Banana Street."

Cidade Velha has the oldest colonial church in the world called Nossa Senhora do Rosario Church. It was constructed in 1495.

Lastly, we can see the town center and its Pillory which was erected in 1512 or 1520. It's a marble pillar used to punish rebellious slaves by publicly chaining them here for all to see. This town, like much of West Africa, flourished during the slave trade and was a key shipping stop.