The Cape Verde Islands were our third stop near the equator, near the western coast of Africa.  They gave us some perspective on how poor the economy can be in some countries.  There weren’t any good places to go snorkeling in the bay that we moored in, and out of the 5 days that we were in Cape Verde, I only got one actual day of liberty.

Early on Monday morning we pulled into Mindelo.  The harbor had a lot of shipping boats in the harbor, and there were a few small fishing boats floating around in the harbor.  The island is very rocky and barren.  As we were pulling in we could see some pretty high, treeless, and very rocky hills along the shoreline.  The hills looked like they could have been fun to climb, but they looked pretty dangerous.  The wind in Mindelo seemed like it was always blowing.  You wouldn’t think that wind would blow a ship around too much, but as we were sitting in the harbor waiting to moor to the pier, it blew the ship around a little.  The first day in port I had duty, but I had an easy watch from 1200-1600 as the M-16/9mm topside rover. 

During my watch, the ship organized an event on the pier, which we call DC Olympics.  (DC stands for Damage Control.)  Basically, there are a number of events, where each department on the ship has teams to demonstrate their Damage Control prowess.  Some of the events were pipe patching, dressing out in fire fighting gear, a stretcher bearer relay, and a ruptured hose drill, where they had to swap out their “ruptured” hose for a new one.  All together there were about 5 fire hoses on the pier, and in the end it started to turn into an all-out water fight.  A few people needed to relieve a little tension, and it was good for the crew to loosen up some.  Combat Systems department tied with Engineering department for 1^st place, which was good, because we lost last time that we had a DC Olympics.

After the DC Olympics, there was a barbeque on the pier, and a talent show for anyone that wanted to display their skills.  There’s a guy on the ship that has a turntable and a huge collection of music, which he played during the whole time.  I wonder what the people of Mindelo thought as we were booming our American music across the harbor…  There was also a movie, which we played by pointing a projector at the side of the ship.  I think they played Déjà vu, the new movie that came out a little while ago.

Tuesday, which was the only day of liberty that I got, I went into town.  There wasn’t a whole lot to see, but I got a couple of pictures.  There were a lot of street beggars and shopkeepers that were eager for us to spend our money on them, and we spent a lot of time avoiding them.  There was one little kid that looked to be about 10, who came up to us and began telling us that he was hungry in the whini-est voice he could muster.  He looked like he’s had more than a couple good meals in the recent past, and I’m sure that it’s because of his persistence.  He followed us a little while, but it didn’t take long for us to leave him behind.  I heard a couple of stories from the other ET’s that there was a lady that latched onto them for a while, and kept complaining that her baby was hungry.  They didn’t see any sign of a baby, but I think they gave her a little money, which only encouraged other beggars in the area to prompt them for more money.

We walked over most of the downtown area.  There was a flea market in one part of town, but most of the wares were cheap beads, trinkets, and a few other things.  There were a number of woodcarvings that many vendors were selling, and one of the vendors was quite insistent that we had to go inside of his store.  He was quite upset when we refused and moved on.  He also followed us for a little while, and by the 10^th time we said no, I think he got the point.

There was a lot of construction in Mindelo, and hardware stores seemed to be on every street corner.  We didn’t wander far from the downtown area, but there were a lot of new building being constructed.  Some people are calling the Cape Verde Islands, the “Hawaii” of Europe.  While we were walking around, a couple of guys in nice white button-up shirts, slacks and ties walked up to us.  I immediately recognized that they were probably Mormons, and their nametags looked like they would translate to “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Days Saints.”  They are halfway through their year-long stay in the Cape Verde islands, and I think they were just happy to talk to someone from the US.  They were curious about where we were from, and I was surprised that they hadn’t noticed the US Navy destroyer sitting in their harbor.  You could almost see it from the hill that we were standing on as we talked to them.  We talked with them for a little while, and they gave us directions to a good place to eat.

We made our way down the hill and located an Internet Café.  There seemed like there were quite a few Internet Cafés in the downtown area, and we stopped there to check our Hotmail accounts, which we can’t access from the ship.  It was nice and cool in the café, and the 7 computers all seemed to be sharing 1 slow dial-up Internet connection.  It took me about 45 minutes to check my Hotmail, but it only cost me about 180 escudos, which is about $2.50. 

We went to a restaurant that was part of a hotel, because it was one of the few places that was serving any food.  The regular dinner hours started at 1930, which was still a couple hours away, but they were serving pizza, which was really good.  I got the Fantastico Pizza, which seemed to be the equivalent of a Supreme in the US.  It had green peppers, cheese, shrimp, tomatoes, and a few other miscellaneous things.  It was beginning to get dark at this point, and we headed back to the ship.

I was going to go out again on Wednesday, but apparently, we moored to the only refueling pier in the harbor.  There was another ship that needed to refuel, so we pulled out in the afternoon, did circles all night and came back in on Thursday morning.  It meant that I wasn’t able to go on liberty on my only other liberty day, but I think that I already saw everything there was to see.

Thursday night/Friday morning I had the 0300-0800 M-16/9mm topside rover, and immediately after my watch we had to station the Sea and Anchor detail once again to pull out Friday morning. 

I was a little disappointed with Cape Verde.  I was expecting a little better economy, and maybe even some places to snorkel or scuba dive.  The water in the harbor fairly clear, but we were warned that the water here isn’t very clean.  The locals have built up immunities to things that we could get from the water.

Today we had an UNREP for about 5 hours, and besides the usual hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel, we also got food, mail, and vending machine supplies.  (You would be amazed at how much soda the crew drinks.)  Maybe I’ll get some statistics from the cruise like I got last deployment.

We may be done with our warm-weather ports, but I’m looking forward to some of the other places on our schedule.  I have the 0200-0700 watch tonight, so I’ll probably go to sleep directly after chow, so that I’m well rested for the late night hours.

If you can understand this paragraph, then you are well versed in Navy slang:

“Me and Willy were lollygagging by the scuttlebutt after being aloft and were perched on a bollard eyeballing a couple of bilge rats and flangeheads using crescent hammers to pack a fitting on a handybilly.  A deck ape ran through the nearest hatch and dogged it tight because he knew the sewer pipe sailor was going to lay below, catch him between decks and punch him in the snot locker. He'd probably wind up on the binnacle list but Doc would find a way to gundeck the paper or give it the deep six to keep himself above board.” 

(There is more to this story, but it’s a little too non-PG.  I even had to modify this portion of it to remove some of the cruder terms.  If some of saltier old dogs out there understand this small paragraph and want the rest of it, I’ll send you the full story.)