This is the Main Street in Mindelo, the biggest city on the island we are anchored by Sao Vicente or St. Vincent. I just love the bright colours they paint their buildings and the verandas with the wrought island railing. The Cape Verde Islands were colonized by the Portugese and they gained their independence in the 1970's without any bloodshed. According to what I read they have a very young population on the islands but they have a good education level. The people are poor and there are street people lying about and there are guys that hassle us as we come out of the marina. Walking on the streets, we have not been bothered very much and the shop keepers are starting to recognize us and say hello. We have been busy looking for boat parts, and finding where is the best place to buy food so we have not been travelling or sightseeing anywhere else.
We have been having a very social time though which is nice for a change. There are mostly European boats here, lots of French, Dutch, and German boats. We had a Swedish couple and a young German pair over to the boat and we had such a good time they will be joining us for Christmas dinner. I managed to buy a whole turkey, it is only about 4 kilos so will fit in the oven wonderfully. Last night we headed of to a different German boat and Sue and Thomas are hoping to head up the East Coast of the U.S. to Canada, so we gave them a chart book and some tips on where the best spots are.
On our travels to find a new spark plug for our Honda generator, as of today we have not found one, we ended up on the seamy side of the harbour. There ar at least three large sunken wrecks in the area and this boat looks like it may be the next to bite the dust. 
Cat's-Paw IV is just beside the yellow boat at the back , the small blue hulled boat in front of us belongs to the young German couple. They are only 18 and the skipper has sailed this boat from Hamburg. He picked up his mate in Gomera and they plan to cross to the Caribbean . They are either crazy or courageous, I haven't decided which yet but you have to admire their guts. The boat is only 7 meters, very small, they came here at the same time as us and the boat got completely soaked at one point, all their food was swimming in the bottom of the boat, not fun!
