On this morning, we took a drive around the northeast portion of the island of Sao Vicente. It was not a very exciting drive. The fact that it was both foggy and Sahara dusty didn't help the viewing. For much of the morning, we had close to zero visibility. But while it was not a great drive with nice viewing, I will still point out a few things that I found interesting.

We started our drive by going up to the top of a mountain called Monte Verde. On the way up, I managed some closeup photos of a farmer’s corn field. This was of interest to me because I've grown plenty of corn and seen plenty of corn fields. Corn is always grown in rows. I put 3-4 seeds per hill about twelve inches apart in rows that are three feet apart. With the lack of rain on Sao Vicente, farmers and gardeners are forced to plant their corn about one seed to a hill with each corn plant about 3 feet apart from each other, like below.

From the top of Monte Verde, I found another interesting discovery. They get very little rain, but they do get fog regularly from the ocean drifting up the mountain in waves. To capture this moisture, they put up screens. The screens intercept and capture the fog rolling past, it drips down, is collected, and funneled into a water storage tank. That's their source of water at the top. It's a very simple technology and it works. Vicky and a fellow traveler checked and the tank was full of water.

Our third visit was to Calhau which is a small fishing village on the eastern coast of Sao Vicente. It's another small fishing village and the sand beaches next to it are turtle nesting areas. You can see Calhau and some of the turtle nesting area below.

We also visited a loggerhead turtle rescue and recovery station. They help nurse injured turtles back to recovery, then put them back in the ocean.

Right next to our cruise ship in Mindelo was a beautiful beach. We were told that they had removed all the black sand and replaced it with white sand, which was very effective. We stopped here after our walk about Mindelo to check it out. You can see Vicky wading into the water wearing her blue shirt. We planned to come back and swim here in the afternoon but ran into a problem. The guards wouldn't let us into the port gate right next to the beach and our ship. They said it was a commerce entry. That meant we had to walk all the way around the port to get back to our ship. And after lunch, we didn't feel like making that long walk again on a hot afternoon.

This was the end of our visit to Sao Vicente Island.