You either love them or hate them, we were told. The Cape Verde Islands are a group of fourteen volcanic islands in the form of a crescent, a detached piece of West Africa some three hundred miles off the coast of Senegal. Until 1975 the islands were Portuguese, but now form an independent country. Portuguese is the main language and remains a strong influence, but this is changing fast with the influx of many immigrants from West Africa among the younger generation, and French Creole is spoken widely.

Since 1990 the country has had a functioning western-style democracy, where almost uniquely in Africa the ruling party has changed a couple of times as a result of elections. Even so, it remains desperately poor, with a GDP per capita among the lowest anywhere. Natural assets are minimal. The volcanic islands are arid, mostly bare brownish rock with tufts of green here and there. Yellow sand over much of the land must have been blown over from the Sahara, as the sand around the beaches is volcanic black. The islands look like great lumps of desert stuck out of the Atlantic. Only hill mist allows for a few scraps of agriculture on the tops of the highest mountains. In the past, the islands’ position made them an important refuelling station, first for ships, then for transcontinental flights, but this is now gone. Tourism is making a faltering start on the island of Sal (which has the only international airport), and a couple of other towns, but is still only for the more adventurous traveller. It is not helped by the reputation for petty crime. There are reliable inter-island connections by plane as well as ferry, but the few hotels and restaurants are very basic. Prices of goods and services are surprisingly high, for example by comparison with the Canary Islands.

One thing Cape Verde Islands do have though is an abundance of fish, and perhaps as a result we noticed few obvious signs of malnourishment. The nastier tropical diseases are also entirely absent. Housing we saw also looked reasonable, and there was little sign of the desperate shanty towns of many parts of Africa, even in outer urban areas that lacked any semblance of roads or public services. The houses are breeze-block built, the better ones plastered and painted attractively, but in the poorer areas very often the upper floor is not completed, only the lower floor is used. Barred windows, heavy locks and large dogs inside reflect the security situation. The town roads are cobbled, beyond that are just dirt tracks.

Sunset en route to Cape Verde Islands.

Mindelo

It had been an 800 mile passage from the Canary Islands, rough for the first part with Tropical Storm Delta not far behind us. It calmed as we approached the island, and Lyn caught two dorado which fed us for the next couple of days. The islands are hard to spot from any distance as there is a permanent haze in the sky - the Harmattan caused by dust from the Sahara - which makes for dramatic sunsets but causes a gritty feel in the eyes. The day before we left it blew particularly hard, and the whole yacht was smothered in brown dust on the windward side.

Fishing boat in Mindelo.

Harmattan, Sao Antao.

There were a lot of yachts - about 60 – when we arrived at Mindelo, or Porto Grande as it is known locally, on 4th December 2005. This is an exceptionally fine anchorage, easy to approach, in a deep bay that is completely sheltered from all directions. Some of the yachts were from the ARC (Atlantic Rally Crossing) that had hit the bad weather of TS Delta and sought refuge here. One had lost its mast. For people crossing the Atlantic for the first time, this was their first encounter with boat-boys, who meet each yacht as it arrives and offer their services to watch the boat, mind the dinghy, get fresh water etc. In the West Indies they can be tiresomely over-persistent, and there is an element of ‘protection racket’ about the services they offer, which concerned us here specially when the port police stressed that the yacht should not be left unattended after dark nor the dinghy taken ashore without being securely locked. But the boat boys of the Cape Verde Islands were far more polite than those in the Caribbean, and did not press us when we refused their services. In practice we encountered no problems, nor heard of any, even though some yachts left their inflatable dinghies with outboards attached, floating off the back of the yacht all night. In many poor countries this would be regarded as an open invitation to theft.

We enjoyed our stay in Mindelo. People were invariably welcoming and helpful, particularly during our search for a new cooker door which is related elsewhere. Only a rather basic range of goods were available, and although the town had plenty of shops some had no more than than what you might expect to see on a street-seller's blanket. However, there were several interesting markets. Meat, other than frozen chicken, was unobtainable. There were plenty of vegetables in the market but mostly of low quality and quite expensive. Fish though, in the fish market, was great value. First time we visited we spotted a tray of fresh looking small fish and asked how much. 60p was the answer – at first we thought that was for each fish but then we realised they meant the whole tray, about 20 fish. We bought half, and exceptionally good they were. There were a couple of small supermarkets with limited food supplies, an excellent bakery, one Internet café for communications, so we found everything we needed. There is even a ‘yacht club’ dating back a hundred years. No local members these days but it is a reasonable restaurant with a few facilities for visiting yachtsmen. These include showers, a ‘poste restante’ service, and a ‘Mr Fixit’ with a small workshop who is the first point of call for anyone needing repairs or assistance. He is in the process of developing a small marina in the corner of the harbour which we think will eventually transform Mindelo as a yachting centre.

Praia.

However elsewhere in the Cape Verde islands we had less of a good time. In the small fishing villages on other islands that we visited, people were noticeably poorer, and the adults were sometimes surly and unhelpful while the children could be abusive if we refused to give them money. We did not linger long. We ended up at the capital, Praia, on the southern tip of Santiago, where we had to check out with immigration. The anchorage was rather exposed in the open bay, and the four or five yachts there were keeping clear of the town side as the landing was said to be prone to theft. Instead we anchored not far from the ferry port, which was where immigration could be found. As at Mindelo, the port seemed to be constantly teeming with crowds of people, and it was a struggle to push through to the office with the help of a boat-boy. The holding on the anchorage was indifferent and one yacht slipped on its anchor in strong winds while the owner was ashore. A quick-witted boat-boy rowed out to the wayward yacht before it disappeared out to sea, and got the anchor to hold for long enough until the owner came panting back to his dinghy and out on board, where he was advised of a better place to lay his anchor. A boat-boy also found fresh water for us that seemed unavailable in the port itself, though it ended up costing us about £2.50 for ten gallons of water that we considered not fit for drinking.

Boys in Sao Nicholau.

We needed bottled water. The town was a little way from the port, and the walk meant crossing a dried up river-bed choked with garbage, in which a vile stream of stinking green liquid sluggish flowed to the sea. There was rubbish everywhere. It seemed like the whole cliff behind the port was being used as a tip, people just chucked it off the top. Nevertheless the town centre, situated on a plateau and walled around, was clean and contained attractive examples of crumbling Portuguese colonial architecture. In the centre was a large and very crowded market with lots of women carrying things balanced on their heads, like a tray of plucked chickens for sale, or even a solitary bottle of Coca-Cola; while above all the hubbub could be heard the squeals of frightened piglets strung up by their hind legs. It was getting close to Christmas, and this is an intensely Roman Catholic country, so preparations were underway. The main street had been dressed with unprepossessing illuminations, and decorated artificial Christmas Trees could be seen in the windows of some houses. A few of shops were given over entirely to tinselly Christmas goodies, which had crowds of small children and younger adults gawping through the windows.

In all though, there was little to encourage us to stay here for Christmas. We checked at the Brazilian Embassy that we would not need a visa to enter Brazil (unlike the Cape Verdeans, many of whom are keen to emigrate there), and on 20th December 2005 set out to sea. It took a long heavy downpour out in the Atlantic to get us clean of all the dust.