The name Santo Antão was given by the Portuguese navigator Diogo Afonso who discovered the island on January 17, 1462, in consonance with the saint of the day of discovery. Colonization began only in 1548. In the 17th century, populations of the islands of Santiago and Fogo with settlers from the north of Portugal founded Povoação, the present village of Ribeira Grande in the northern part of the island.

I opted for the “Santo Antão Island Drive”. There is no dock big enough for our ship on Santo Antão so we had to go in by tender. But we could get off onto a small dock so a dry landing.
 

Wow, what an exciting drive and experience. We started up the side of the mountainside above the port city of Porto Novo. This side of the mountain is very dry with very sparse vegetation. We could see another island - São Vincent in the background.

What really impressed me was the road. This road was built by hand during colonial times. For a cobblestone road, it was remarkably smooth – no potholes or broken places. Lots of stone walls along the edge so it never felt unsafe.

We made another picture stop on the edge of a caldera – evidence that this is a very old volcanic mountain. Enough water collects at the bottom to support some agriculture.  Surrounded by gorgeous scenery.

We then continued higher into the mountains and the vegetation got more and more dense because we were literally up in the clouds. We made another picture stop where there was a steep drop off on both sides of the road. The clouds hid just how far down the drop off was.

Then we wound our way down to the town of Ribeira Grande on the north coast. We continued around the coast to Ponta do Sol, a small, colonial town. We stopped at the town square then walked down to the fishing port. There was a modern office building, and they let us use their very nice bathrooms.

We then backtracked to Ribeira Grande and turned up a deep valley.

 Both sides were terraced to grow a special kind of bananas (they are an important export for Cape Verde) and sugar cane – used to make a local rum called Grogue. We were supposed to stop at a distillery for a tasting, but it got too late. Photos taken out the open window of the moving bus....

We turned around at the end of the paved road and stopped at a little café for drinks and snacks. It was nearly noon by this time, so the snacks were very welcome. We returned to Ribeira Grande and turned right to continue along the coast. I was glad we didn’t have to go back over the mountains, but the coast road was no straighter. There were some newer segments that had blacktop and tunnels to make the road a bit nicer. The scenery was gorgeous – the water so blue. I was struck by the fact that I didn’t see a single sea bird – not even a seagull. All the next photos were taken out the open window of the bus as we drove along...

We made it back to the ship after 2:30 pm. The only restaurant that was open was the grill. I hate to eat too much that late so just had a hot dog, minus the bun.

Was no time to take a tender back into town, plus was too tired, plus Team Trivia is always at 4:00. We have a very loyal team that gets together every day.

We will now have two days at sea heading to the Canary Islands.