We're still in Africa for our 129th country. Sao Tome and Principe is probably my favorite country's name. (It's pronounced Sow Toe-MAY and Prince-Ah-PAY, and it just rolls off the tongue. Even more fun the capital is Sao Tome, so the boys get to almost say it twice when we do flags.
Their motto is fun too! It's 'Leve Leve', which means 'take it easy', a fitting saying for such a laid back island nation.
This tiny country is located in the Gulf of Guinea to the west of Gabon, and to the south of Nigeria. When I say it's tiny, I mean like 372 square miles tiny. That's smaller than Los Angeles. It's just the two islands, with Sao Tome being the much larger of the two (Principe accounts for just 54 square miles). It's the second smallest country in Africa, after Seychelles.
Really, it's only on the map because of Portugal (Portuguese is their official language, by the way). Sao Tome was uninhibited and unclaimed until the Portuguese showed up in 1470. So really, João de Santarém and Pêro Escobar actually dicovered the islands (unlike a certain Christopher Columbus). Once they discovered it, and realized the volcanic soil was really fertile and would be great for agriculture, specifically sugar cane. By the 1500's it was Africa's biggest exporter or sugar. Now, it was done with slave labor, so the history of the island is dark in sense.
That eventually led to growing cacao beans, and then on to coffee. (Here I learned Cacoa beans is the unprocessed beans or powder. It's only Cocoa once it's roasted.) In fact it's the chocolate that puts this place on the map today. While it lost it's title as the biggest producer of chocolate long ago, it is still the country's most important crop. The country's nickname is even 'The Chocolate Isles'. (If you want to read a whole thing about the history of chocolate and a tourist's adventures in Sao Tome- I recommend clicking here!)
Slave labor ended in 1876, but the owners of the rocas (plantations) continue to abuse their workforce for decades. This led to an outbreak of riots in the 50's, where workers were killed in clashes with their Portuguese rulers. Portugal overthrew it's dictator in 1974, and Sao Tome was able to negotiate for its freedom, becoming independent just a year later.
As you can imagine, it's a little tough to come up with a landmark of a country this small out in the Gulf of Guinea. I could have gone with the 'Big Dog', a towering rock that was one part of a volcano. It jets out 2,132 feet from the jungle, so tall it's often surrounded by clouds.
But, the boys think blow holes are pretty cool, and Sao Tome has a good one in the 'Mouth of Hell Blowhole', so I went with that for our landmark. It's on the south side of Sao Tome, and the water collects shooting straight up in a impressive show for visitors.
Much of the landscape of Sao Tome and Principe has remained unchanged, as a dense jungle covers 28% of the island. But you won't find too many mammals roaming around the jungle. Sao Tome has just one endemic species, the Sao Tome shrew. They do have feral pigs though (which I also just learned we have here in Florida!) , and of the coast you can find the gigantic blue marlin. It's also the most important nesting site for turtles in West Africa.
The beauty in this country lies in it's flora and fauna. Due to it's isolation, they have many unique species, including 128 different kinds of orchids.
Oh, and my favorite fun fact: The island of Principe has a big dramatic performance every year to note the battles between the Portugese and the workforce. Everyone dresses up and plays a part. Why is that so awesome? Um, because they do it on my birthday every year (August 10th).
The boys made their post cards.
Calib made the two islands.
Peyton noted the blowhole.
And Hayden drew the solar eclipse. It was in Principe in 1919 when Sir Arthur Eddington witnessed the longest solar eclipse recorded (at 6 minutes, 51 seconds) helping to prove Einstiens theory of general relativity.
If you're talked Sao Tome and Principe food, you really are talking about coffee and cocoa- the two things they are known for. (They also eat a lot of fish, and mashed bananas if you're looking for more of a meal). I decided we would hit the food and wine festival for the Chocolate Studio booth, but the day we did the lesson we might have had a snack of coffee and chocolate as well. (Shout out to Allison who sent me yet another awesome care package with more chocolate because I've been having a tough few weeks.)
We covered five countries at the Food and Wine Festival on October 17th- and Sao Tome and Principe was one of them. While, there's no Sao Tome Booth, there is the Chocolate Studio, so that made sense.
We decided to get both the dishes offered at the booth: The Sweet Dark Chocolate Raspberry Tort and Liquid Nitro Chocolate-Almond Truffle.
The Sweet Dark Chocolate Raspberry Tort, was rich. The five of us all felt like we had our fill of this one. There's no way any of us would have had it on our own. It had a strong dark chocolate flavor, and a raspberry jelly-like filling. Peyton liked this one the most, but he LOVES dark chocolate. Calib hated it, gagged and couldn't believe I made him try it. But, honestly I knew he would hate it. Dark chocolate it one of his least favorite things, right up there with tuna. If given the option, I'm not sure which he would pick.
The Liquid Nitro Chocolate Almond Truffle with warm whiskey caramel went over better with Calib. This one is like an ice cream, but so hard they hammer it (for real, they hammer it!) before putting the toppings on. It was basically a grown up chocolate sundae with caramel topping. It was good, but not one of my favorite festival items.
Since we were having multiple countries in the same Epcot trip, I knew it would be hard to keep track of what people liked enough to give a spoons up, and what they didn't. So after we ate the dishes I took a picture to help me out. (I looked for spoons- but we didn't find them until we got half way around the world.)
This one earned four spoons up. (You can see Calib's orange magic band showing his displeasure at this stop).
The two islands of Sao Tome and Principe are out there in the Gulf of Guinea in a green color. We've also been working on catching up with our scratch off map, we've been behind!
That's 129 down, 67 to go
Next Up: Niger
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