June 12 – São Tomé and Príncipe

Weather – 26º

Steps – 12,168; not hard to get steps when you venture out on your own, and my watch is behaving

crossed at 6AM

Humidity – 80%

Country #97!

I definitely could not have pointed to São Tomé and Príncipe on a map until recently – is it an island? a series of islands, a country? in Africa? the Caribbean? I was clueless. 

I now know it is a group of islands in the Atlantic Ocean just north of the equator, 

art gallery

off the west coast of Africa - São Tomé and Príncipe (pop 200,000) being the 2 main islands. It is the second smallest African country after Seychelles. The islands were uninhabited until the Portuguese arrived in 1470 – independence was gained in 1975, (just like Angola.) The Portuguese dictator was overthrown in 1974 which led to the independence of numerous Portuguese colonies. The new regime was committed to dissolving Portuguese territories.

São Tomé and Príncipe were vital to the Atlantic slave trade.

fort and ship

We haven’t heard a lot about the slavery on this cruise. I understand why but also would like to hear some about it. I suppose it’s kind of like visiting Germany without hearing about the Holocaust.

Rei Amador, led rebellion against Portuguese

I wondered to Chris yesterday if I was tempting fate by pre-adding to my country count. I typically, research the place we’re visiting the day before. This way, I know about the place we are going, before we actually go there. And…a little pre-blogging, getting ahead is always good.

chapel in the fort

Today we were on São Tomé. The ship was anchored in the harbor, so we tendered the 10 minutes to the shore.

The tour was described as a ‘one-manner’, meaning moderately strenuous – the only thing less

random street sculpture

strenuous would be ‘panoramic’. When our group of 16 gathered, one guy had a walker and a couple others had canes. We only had a 5-minute walk between the 2 stops on our tour, but the terrain was rough – large, jagged rocks – by the end of the day I needed definitely the ice Saravanan supplies me with daily. I expected the walker guy to turn around and go back, but he didn’t.

Our tour started with a visit to an art gallery in an old warehouse. The itinerary said we would visit the

random church? 

fort first (all the other groups did), but our guide decided to take us to the last stop first…praise the lord! There are a bunch of groups about 15 in each, trailing behind each guide going to the same places. Why wouldn’t at least one go to the last stop first??? I’m glad we were the one group that did. We are always baffled as to why the groups always go to the same locations in the same order at the same time. That just means crowds…spread us out please.

São Tomé cathedral

This is where tempered expectations were in order. While the guide (whose name I didn’t ever get) was enthusiastic, his English wasn’t the best. We understood as best we could and really that was fine. He focused on the one part of the art gallery that showed São Tomé’s history – this part had English info signs, so we could also read to fill in any blanks.

We looked at the art on our own with little info about the art or the artists, too bad, but it was pleasant to look at. I’d say only about half of the 16 of us were remotely interested. It was hot and humid, so that

inside the cathedral

didn’t increase people’s attention span,

but so often because these tours are included in the cruise fare, you get people who couldn’t care less.

We definitely are those people who take tours no matter what, and almost always the ones that are included, however…we are kind of interested in what ever there is to see and hear.

enormous tree

After the art museum, we walked the 5 minutes to The São Sebastião Museum, in a 16th-century fortress. There we climbed the steep fortress steps and visited each room holding different artifacts where the guide told us about life since colonization. There were a couple of rooms with religious artifacts, the

São Tomé street

enthusiastic, but under-trained guide pointed to a crucifix and said: “this is Jesus on a cross” – like I said, enthusiastic, but untrained.

At the fort, we did learn a bit about slavery and how it was key to São Tomé’s agricultural success.

São Tomé street

Our last stop was for lunch. We’re always interested in local food and drink, so a tour including a meal seemed perfect. There was no drink included, a Portuguese beer was $5USD! We paid it of course, but $5, for a beer that wasn’t even local! Although the food was traditional Santomean cuisine it was pretty typical…fish, chicken, potatoes – fine, but nothing exotic…no ostrich biltong here. Live music accompanied our lunch – a guy singing and playing guitar…that was lovely and interesting. I’m not sure if the music was Santomean, but it sounded sung in Portuguese.

São Tomé street

We couldn’t decide if we wanted to walk around town a bit, get the shuttle to a town square, or hop on the tender back to the ship. Our decision was made for us as the tender was full. Ok…shuttle it is. Chris knew the distance to where the shuttle went wasn’t far (about a 5 min drive), but we thought we’d take it there and maybe walk back. That’s what we did.

There was very, very little for us to do. São Tomé’s tourist infrastructure is pretty nonexistent. We found a market with, in addition to the usual market fare - more Croc sandals than you could ever imagine all dumped in a pile, interesting.

ship bobbing off shore

Of course we are always hunting for a local beer – nope. We did see a nicer looking fish restaurant on our way back to the ship, with some people who looked like us, but by this point we were committed

to going back. There was no place here where locals seemed to be hanging out, beer or no beer.

We found the church, popped inside…it was a Portuguese church, recognizable by the tiles.

more art gallery

All in all it was a good visit to São Tomé. Much of the streets and buildings are in disrepair. I suspect when the Portuguese left, so did the support they gave the island.

Although at first, I wasn’t sure how comfortable I felt walking around being as completely conspicuous as we were, eventually I realized no one really cared about us. No one wanted to sell us anything, take us on a tour, or any of the usual things we encounter as tourists.

breakfast blogging

By the time we got back to the ship all I wanted was a huge glass of water, a shower and a glass of wine. The shower almost didn’t happen – I was so sweaty, I couldn’t get my clothes off!

today's geography lesson