Traveling to Lose the Misery

Capital of Sao Tome
Largest city and capital of the archipelago is at the same time Sao Tome with about 20,000 inhabitants and seaport and airport. It is located in the traditionally heavily populated northern coastal strip and is the center of economic and social island life. It is a small lively town with a special flair, which is produced mainly by the old, slowly decaying Portuguese colonial buildings. One need not wonder, but the town is marked in places, strong military and police, and it is not only indigenous military, but also a thousand strong military contingent from Angola. This military presence is completely normal. To see everything important, what the capital has to offer, ranging from actually already almost 2-3 hours. The life and especially the lifestyle of the islanders something more familiar, it is best just to crowded places for a few hours to relax and watch the hustle and bustle. If it is several days in the city, then one is known as a tourist anyway quite fast and knows very short time, half the city population While heavy rains and the stifling midday heat, but the city looks deserted.
Santa Se Cathedral
Cathedral: The majority of Santomesen are devout Catholics and so is the cultural heart of the capital without a doubt in the 16th Se Cathedral was built in Santa century with its large front yard and the two towers, which dominate the whole city. Although the construction began in 1576, but it actually ended in 1958 with the current view of the cathedral. In this church, read the pope in 1992 as part of his pastoral visit to Angola and Sao Tome & Principe even fair. The total deformed well behind the cathedral has in some way been properly mystical. In the evening Sunday services the church is often filled to the rafters. (more…)

For centuries, were Sao Tome and Principe one of the main hubs of organized slave trade. In addition, the islands in the sixteenth century took a leading position in the sugar cane cultivation in the world ein.Verlassene warehouses Later it is the plantation of coffee and cocoa by, making the islands at the beginning of the 20th Century the world’s largest cocoa producers rose. This unique position was the one founded on extraordinary organizational talent of the Portuguese colonialists and partly to the continued slavery for centuries. In Sao Tome and Principe traces of this colonial period are still found in a very good form of remnants of the old Rocas – architecturally interesting mansions in colonial plantations, factory buildings, warehouses and railway premises. In the Rocas were the mansions and huge plantation holdings of the Portuguese, where lived the need for the plantation slaves worked under inhuman conditions, and were supervised. Slavery was officially abolished in 1876 but eventually, but the slaves were virtually replaced only by contract laborers from Angola and the inhuman condition changed, thereby virtually anything. The resentment and anger of the workers over their Portuguese rulers in 1953 finally to “Batepa massacre” that killed at where the crushing of an uprising more than a thousand workers. (more…)