We docked in Mindelo, on St. Vincent in Cape Verde Islands for a day in spring 2003. We enjoyed this stop. Prior to going, a few people I knew who had been there (very few) said this would be a good day to stay on the ship, but I am glad we didn't. There's not much there, but that never stops us. We took the shuttle into town and walked around. Our mission was to find local beer, and an internet cafe to get away from the 1.00/min charge the ship charged, and as we had been at sea for 7 straight days (coming up from Namibia), as much as we loved that, we needed to walk on land again. We found both - with the help of an enterprising young man who said he would 'take us on a walking tour'. He approached us in the local market (big market, neat stuff - mostly food, but neat), and we thought 'why not?' His name was Manny, maybe he'll still be doing it! So, he took us to a store to buy the local beer - Coral beer - (DH has to always sample the local beer). The store owner told us Manny was a crook, but, hey, we thought he was OK! Then, he took us through the market, telling us what was what and introduced us to some of the local sellers. He showed us the old presidential palace, but now a Municipal Hall as they don't have a president anymore, since independence. Told us some good juicy gossip stories about life before independence - he spoke ecellent English, he had grown up on Long Island. Then, he showed us the internet cafe, collected the money I offerred him for his little tour and we spent the rest of the afternoon waiting in line for a computer at the cafe - seems no one on that ship wanted to pay the 1.00/min! They were just 'reconstructing' the cafe (which only had cold beer & pop in a cooler and 4 computers) so we amused ourselves by watching how Cape Verdians 'reconstruct'. That is until we got to the part where they were arc welding with just their sunglasses on! (we looked away for that!)
And that was about it!
If you are into photos, take some photos of the island from the ship as it's coming in to dock, it's very pretty - looks desolate, but the colours on the buildings on the mountainside are quite striking against this backdrop.