Mindelo, Cape Verde.

First, a quick note: We are traveling for the rest of the month, so internet access will likely be sparse. If I am slow to respond to comments, it’s due to my lack of connectivity. More on that journey in the months to come.

In 2023, we spent a short day at Cape Verde while island-hopping across the Atlantic Ocean from Brazil to Spain. From a standpoint of exceptional views, Cape Verde was one of our best stops. Our excursion bus took us to viewpoints high above the port city and to more secluded beaches along the shore. In a future post, I will feature more images from that excursion, but for today’s Cellpic Sunday, here are some teaser views captured on my Samsung S23U. We could see the ships in Porto Grande Bay from our viewpoint high above Mindelo. On the far right of the photo above, I included Bird Island (Ilhéu dos Pássaros) and the lighthouse high on the top of the small island. I didn’t know the significance of Bird Island until we departed Cape Verde and sailed close to the lighthouse. You can read more about the Dom Luis Lighthouse here.

Cape Verde was an uninhabited island before its discovery by Portuguese explorers. Diogo Afonso claimed the uninhabited islands in the mid-1400s. The Portuguese introduced sugarcane cultivation, requiring a large labor force. This led to the transatlantic slave trade becoming a central pillar of the Cape Verdean economy. Enslaved Africans were brought from West Africa to work on the plantations. In addition, Cape Verde’s location off the West African coast made it a vital stopping point for ships traveling across the Atlantic. Merchants and privateers flocked to the islands, further boosting the island’s economy.

Mindelo is a port city on the island of São Vicente in Cape Verde, an archipelago of volcanic islands off the coast of West Africa. The town is set against a backdrop of rugged mountains and overlooks the scenic Porto Grande Bay. This natural harbor has made Mindelo a historically important stopping point for transatlantic ships.

One of the things that impressed me was the tour guide’s emphasis on the country’s independence from Portugal in 1975. His positive outlook was no doubt focused on tourism. Cape Verde is a small island nation with limited natural resources. The economy relies heavily on tourists, and we were undoubtedly valued guests.

About the photos: All three images were captured in telephoto modes. The opening photo is at 7.9 mm using the camera’s telephoto lens. Using the super-telephoto lens, the lighthouse and port images are 27.2 mm.

Despite the partly cloudy fair-weather day, some haze was in the air, so all three images were tweaked with Luminar Neo’s Dehaze tool. The colors in the images were exceedingly blue, so a liberal application of “Remove Color Cast” was used to tone down the blueish cast. That wasn’t enough, so I used the HSL tool in Saturation mode to further reduce the blue in the water and sky. Minor tweaks in cropping and leveling the images were accomplished in Adobe Lightroom and all of the images were placed in a folder on my Flickr site here.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner