Customer Reviews

Cape Verde Islands: The Bradt Travel Guide

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Irwin and Wilson's guide gives you all the factual information you need, and in addition succeeds in capturing the spirit of Cape Verde, with boxes on cultural and historical issues linked to each island. There is no doubt about it: This is the best guide available. If you read German, Rolf Osang's "Kapverdische Inseln" from Dumont is nearly as good and a useful supplement (especially when it comes to photos). The chapters on Cape Verde in Rough Guides' and Lonely Planet's books on West Africa are neither up-to-date nor in-depth enough if you plan to spend more than a few days in Cape Verde (which you should!).

The appendix on Crioulo language in Irwin and Wilson's book is brief but good. Don't be put off by the nasty details on horrible diseases in the section on health!

This was just the sort of thing a hardened backpacker needed. It had all the useful nooks and crannies of info you need - plus the fact that it filled in a lot of the extra info you like to get about a place you're seeing. They gave a great account of the islands' history - it was really moving.

I first visited the Cape Verdes in 1987 while researching the ATLANTIC ISLANDS, a sailing guide covering the Azores, Madeira group, Canaries and Cape Verdes, now in its third edition. Getting information on the Cape Verdes in the English language was difficult in the extreme -- if only Aisling and Colum's excellent book had been available then! These days no sane person should visit the islands without reading it first. The Cape Verdes come as something of a culture shock after the Canaries -- this book will explain why, and help you get the most from the experience. Buy it!

If you plan on visiting the Islands of Cape Verde, this travel guide is essential. I have not found a better or more thorough guide. I currently live here but I am American and I knew nothing of the islands when I arrived. But after living here a while, I discovered that this book is as accurate as I initially thought. There are few things misspelled but that is to be overlooked by the amount of truely uselful and thorough the information is. I also liked the little touches of background and history on each island. It is very well done.

I read this good book, here in Brazil. This book has these main advantages:
1- The couple of authors really know these islands. All the nine Cape Verde's islands with person are focused. Even the islets without persond living are remembered and have good text.
2- All restaurants have sentences about them. Time to get the meal, style, size, place are writen. Even very small restaurants are in this book.
3- All hotels, even small "hotels", in fact small "pousadas", with just three small rooms are with text on them. See page 299, with some sentences about a "pousada" with three rooms. And are more than a dozen of these small places to stay.
4- The good things of the all nine islands and even more important, the bad things of all the islands are remembered.
5- All main cities have their maps with their squares, streets and avenues. These maps shows the places of hotels and restaurants.
6- I never went to Cape Verde islands and I don't know anyone that went to these islands, but I hadn't any problem about reading and understanding this book.

Even with these good things, I must give four stars for this book, because of these problems:
1- There's about thirty photos in this book. The vast majority are weak photos. All photos are with color.
2- There's maps with color, just a page after the cover, but these small maps are weak. All the nine main islands have maps on its chapter, but this nine maps haven't color and are imcomplete. Beaches and even places focused on the text aren't ever on the maps.
3- There's some mistakes about Ribeira Grande (page 71), the means of Boa Vista in Portuguese (page 118), the means of "jaqueira" in Portuguese (page 256) and about Pedro Alvares Cabral (page 298).
These three problemas are small and this book remains good for me.

This was the first, but it won't be the last, travel guide I'll buy from the Bradt series.

It contains an outstanding overview of the Islands' geology, political history and economy along with great suggestions for active sports tourism and passive sightseeing.

I was so impressed I bought the Bradt guide to the Canary Islands too.

Both will come in handy on a trans-Atlantic cruise we've booked for this Fall.

The book was very outdated and there's nothing new to learn that couldn't easily have been googled. As for visiting Cape Verde, we LOVED it.