Posts From São Tomé and Principe

Dinner in the Red Ginger Restaurant.

I have not mentioned before that the ship is taking precautions to reduce the risk of piracy. As night approaches all cabin curtains are closed, and various external lights are turned off to make the ship less visible. This seems to be a function of being off the West Coast of Africa. I might say it was a bit of a surprise when we got a nice printed note to tell us this was going to happen.

Today we had a tour of São Tomé which is the capital and largest city of the island and Central African country of São Tomé and Principe. Here is a link to a wikipedia page about the country click here. Like many West African countries the first European occupants of the island were Portuguese in about 1470 and eventually replaced by Dutch and then English. The Portuguese brought slaves to the islands from nearby African mainland countries and that is the source of todays population. As you can see throughout the photos below fishing is an important sourcce of food, while cocoa and chocolate are a major export. Portuguese is the primary language and most of the population are nominally Catholic although various belief systems such as voodoo were brought to the islands by the slaves. We were "entertained" by two voodoo-style dances today, though it was hard to tell the extent to which these were anything more than tourist entertainment.