Praia de São Pedro — Attraction in São Vicente

❌Danger - would not recommend, not safe❌

Tl;dr 💥🔪🏴‍☠️😱 Ended up fleeing from the beach and S.Pedro after the 2 cousins on the turtle tour fought amongst themselves over who would take the money, while we were still on the boat, then running after each other with a knife and later being threatened with an harpoon. Story below 👇

So this story starts at Mindelo where me and my friend caught a collective bus to S. Pedro. Already before leaving there was a guy, whose name I believe was Gami, trying to sell us the turtle tour to which we replied multiple times we did not want to do and were just checking the beach and having lunch. When arriving at S. Pedro this guy still tries to sell it and follows us to the only tourist restaurant at the beach. We go there to have lunch and before the food arrives I go for a dive.

A different guy (Elio, supposedly Gami’s cousin) appears and tries to sell me weed since it’s Bob Marley’s day, I refuse, so he tried to sell a tour to one side of the beach or the other and the turtle tour again. Also refuse. So then he just asks me to buy him a water to which I agree. Then he just sits there next to us at the tourist restaurant talking about the life there and whatnot which we didn’t mind. We end up buying him lunch as well.

Eventually he convinces us to go with him to do the turtle tour (which is just a 10 meter ride by boat from shore) but says that his cousin (Gami) would be mad if we went with Elio because he talked to us first. So Elio disappears and when he comes back says that he sorted things with his cousin and we can go with them both. While going to their boat a third guy appears saying we were supposed to go with him but we never saw this one before 🤷‍♂️.

While at the boat the two cousins are fighting in Criollo which we don’t understand apart from some words about who saw us first. After the dive, when we gave them the money, each one reaches for one of the bills and start fighting each other (with us still on the boat) until Gami throws Elio into the water. Gami then starts running after Elio with a knife 🔪 on his hand (I did not see the knife but my friend did). At this point we just want to get out of there, we get our stuff and go to the tourist restaurant for about 2 minutes. We leave to the main square and pass by Gami again, now with an harpoon in his hand, saying it’s all our fault. We just keep going. On the square another guy approaches us saying that we should leave immediately to the airport or Mindelo in his car because Gami is “activated” and with the harpoon on hand saying he might come looking for us to hurt or rob us. I believe he was just trying to scare us so that we would pay him for the ride back. We say we already called a taxi and don’t want any more trouble. We only felt safe again when our taxi arrived, which luckily we had kept the number from before, as there are no taxis in S. Pedro.

This whole ordeal for 30€ (which is super expensive for what it is) and the guys were supposed to be cousins..

I do feel for Elio, he was quite nice but has an unhinged cousin.

We also never wanted to do the boat tour, we just wanted to help Elio out after getting...

Nothing to do here unless you are going on fishing boats to go see the sea turtles. I chose not to go as these turtles are fed fish wish is not what they would normally eat (they would eat plankton). So basically by supporting this business you are promoting a dangerous practice that may endanger further the sea turtles. I hope biosphera can one day educate the fisherman about this. I do get it's their lifelihood. But there must be a more sustainable way to do this activity.

The beach itself is not suitable for swimming / sun bathing. Sand is sadly riddled with rubbish including broken glass. The sea is actually dangerous with many currents. No life guards. Definitely not suitable for children.

However if you want towards the other end of the beach, next to Foya Hotel, there is a clean patch of sand (the hotel probably keeps it clean) and some rockpools so great for families there. But the sea will still be dangerous and no life guard so okay to dip your toes but beware of swimming. It is technically a different beach according to signage hence not rating both...

Beautiful beach like in the movies. You can do water sports there or you can go snorkelling with turtles. There are a lot of local people who want to sell you a trip to see the turtles but you can take your own equipment and just swim less than 50m from the shore to see them for free. Also, there are a lot of seashells on the beach, but they are all broken because of rocks. It's not very easy to sunbathing there because of the strong wind (at least...