Fishing boats on Praia da Santa maria, Sal Island, Cape Verde, Africa
Neale And Judith Clark
Photograph - Photography
CAPE VERDE SAL - Colourful traditional local fishing boats pulled up on the beach at Santa Maria, Praia da Santa maria, Sal Island, Cape Verde, Africa
Cape Verde or Cabo Verde is officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, an archipelago and island country in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands. The Cape Verde archipelago was uninhabited until the 15th century, when Portuguese explorers discovered and colonized the islands, thus establishing the first European settlement in the tropics. Because the Cape Verde islands were located in a convenient location to play a role in the Atlantic slave trade, Cape Verde became economically prosperous during the 16th and 17th centuries, attracting merchants, privateers, and pirates.
Sal (Portuguese for "salt") is an island in Cape Verde. Sal is a tourist destination with white sandy beaches and over 350 days of sunshine a year. For Europeans , the island was discovered on 3 December 1460 and named Llana ("flat"). This name was changed into the current "Sal" when the two large salt ponds (Pedra de Lume and Santa Maria) were discovered. Santa Maria was founded in 1830 for the production of salt. Up to 30,000 tons of salt were shipped from Santa Maria each year. A pier was built in the area of Ponta de Vera Cruz and a small rail track was built to carry the salt to the pier. Most of the product was exported to Brazil, which was halted in 1887 when Brazil imposed a high tax on imported salt to protect its own salt production. The town went into a deep decline, only to recover in 1920 when a Portuguese investor resumed salt production. This continued until 1984. In 1935, Santa Maria was elevated from a village to a town. In 1967, Belgian industrialists and engineers Georges Vynckier and Marguerite Massart opened Cape Verde's first resort hotel named Morabeza. After 1986, tourism became an important industry on the island Praia de Santa Maria is a beach on the south coast of the island of Sal, Cape Verde. It stretches from the city center of Santa Maria in the east to the Ponta do Sinó (the island's southernmost point) in the southwest.