Concelho de São Vicente, Cape Verde — Towns & Travel Guide

What is Concelho de São Vicente known for?

The concelho of São Vicente takes in the island of the same name, one of the Barlavento Islands that form the northern group of the Cape Verde archipelago. Two neighbours frame it. Santo Antão lies on one side, separated by the Canal de São Vicente, and Santa Luzia lies on the other, which makes the strait as much a part of the island's identity as its own shore.

Where is Concelho de São Vicente?

São Vicente is one of the Barlavento Islands, the northern group of the Cape Verde archipelago. The concelho covers the island. Municipality and island share a name and an outline, so the concelho has no mainland portion and no second island, and its boundary is simply the coastline of São Vicente.

Santo Antão and Santa Luzia sit either side. The island lies between the two, with the Canal de São Vicente cutting it off from Santo Antão, and that channel is the nearest thing the concelho has to a land border. The Atlantic Ocean surrounds all of it.

Cape Verde sits out in that ocean off the West African coast, and São Vicente takes the full exposure of an island with no larger landmass to shelter it. The tropics hold the archipelago. São Vicente lies north of the equator inside that band, which rules out a cold season and leaves the year to the ocean and the wind rather than to any seasonal swing in temperature.

Barlavento is the group it belongs to, the northern islands of Cape Verde, and São Vicente is read alongside Santo Antão and Santa Luzia rather than on its own.

What is Concelho de São Vicente like?

Portuguese names the whole neighbourhood. São Vicente, Santo Antão and Santa Luzia are all saints' names in Portuguese, and the channel between the first two carries the same form as the Canal de São Vicente. The pattern runs across Cape Verde.

Naming the islands for saints ties the archipelago to Portuguese as firmly as anything else about the place, and the concelho's own title keeps that form in administrative use. One language, one naming habit. Island life here is bounded by water.

São Vicente has Santo Antão on one side of the Canal de São Vicente and Santa Luzia on the other, so the concelho's outlook runs toward its neighbours rather than inland. The Barlavento Islands work as a set. Travel among the northern group of Cape Verde is a matter of channels and crossings, and São Vicente sits in the middle of that traffic by virtue of its position between two other islands.

The Atlantic Ocean is always the third party. With no larger landmass for shelter out here off the West African coast, the concelho takes its weather and much of its character from open water.

What is the history of Concelho de São Vicente?

Saints gave the islands their names. São Vicente, Santo Antão and Santa Luzia carry Portuguese saints' names, a naming habit that runs across the Barlavento Islands and marks the archipelago's long Portuguese connection. The channel took the island's name in turn.

Canal de São Vicente names the water between the concelho and Santo Antão, so the island's own name has spread to the strait that separates it from its nearest neighbour.

What is the climate of Concelho de São Vicente?

The Atlantic Ocean does the work. São Vicente lies in it off the West African coast, north of the equator and inside the tropics, so the concelho keeps no cold season and its year turns on wind and water rather than on temperature. Exposure is total.

No larger landmass stands between the island and the open ocean, and the Canal de São Vicente carries that same open water right up against the concelho's shore.

How do you get to Concelho de São Vicente?

Everything arrives by sea or air. São Vicente is an island of Cape Verde, so the concelho has no road connection to anywhere, and the Canal de São Vicente is the water any approach from Santo Antão has to cross. Santa Luzia lies on the other side.

Within the Barlavento Islands the concelho is reached as one stop among several, and a route through the northern group of Cape Verde normally takes in more than a single island.