Sao Tome and Principe

We had 3 sea days including Easter to get to the next port. During this time, there was extra security personnel on board and most of the external lighting was turned off at night. While we had no problems there have been pirating instances to other ships in the past. Our trivia team which started with the four of us expanded to eight people with the addition of Tim, Eileen, Bart, and Pam. 

Pam, Bart, Eileen, Andy, Mary, John, Jim, Tim

Sao Tome is known as the Land of Chocolate. It is the smallest African country with only 200,000 inhabitants. Chocolate is created from cocoa beans, which originated in South America. Each pod contains 20 to 30 beans in a white pulp. The beans need to be fermented for three to nine days, the shells are removed and the beans are ground. Then a drink was made from the powder. But the magic ingredient that gives chocolate its sweet flavor is sugar. Gowing sugar was a labor-intensive process and led to the huge slave trade. In the 16^th Century, Sao Tome was the leading sugar producer in the world. In the 19^th century. In the 19^th century, slavery was banned in Brazil, so Portugal began planting cacao plants in Sao Tome and Angola, Portugal’s African possessions. In 1900 Sao Tome became the largest cocoa producer, representing 15% of the world’s production.

We visited the Cathedral, which took over 400 years to be built. The problem was pirates, who destroyed the Cathedral numerous times. We walked to Independence Square where we watched a Tchiloli dance, which tells a story of death and betrayal from a 16^th story about Charlamagne that reached the islands and is celebrated in dance. We then visited a nearby fishing village where we saw the Dance of the Congo. We continued to the History Museum for the island and finally to Fort San Sebatian. Here was a statue of King Amador, who led a slave rebellion in 1595. He is considered a national hero.

Fisherman on the beach

Sao Tome and Principe was out 107^th country.