Cape Verde Bus Independent transit guide
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Bus guide

Music island

São Vicente

Transcor SV operates Mindelo’s urban lines. When we checked, the operator’s website served a hosting placeholder behind a certificate that expired in June 2025, so no published line list, timetable or fare could be verified anywhere. The buses run; the information does not. Ask at the stop, and treat any third-party route list you find online with suspicion.

By bus

Getting to São Vicente

Transcor SV operates Mindelo’s urban lines. When we checked, the operator’s website served a hosting placeholder behind a certificate that expired in June 2025, so no published line list, timetable or fare could be verified anywhere. The buses run; the information does not. Ask at the stop, and treat any third-party route list you find online with suspicion.

  • City buses exist in Mindelo but no published line list or fare could be verified.
  • No dedicated airport bus from São Pedro airport could be verified; arrivals rely on taxi and aluguer.
  • The ferry to Porto Novo on Santo Antão is the island’s most important connection — plan around it, not around the buses.

Source: Transcor SV: Mindelo urban bus operator · CV InterIlhas: Routes, schedules and island-to-island crossing times

Before you go

Times change. Take them with you.

Published departures shift with the season. Cape Verde Bus keeps the current timetable in your pocket.

Cape Verde Bus — app coming soon

Get notified at launch
Evening light over Mindelo and Porto Grande bay with the Monte Cara ridge behind, São Vicente
Photo: Franzfoto, CC BY-SA 3.0 (cropped)

Worth your time

What São Vicente does best

Mindelo is the reason people fall for Cape Verde. A colonial harbour town wrapped around a volcanic bay, it produced morna and coladeira, it throws the country’s best carnival, and it lives outdoors in a way the capital does not. It also has genuine city buses, run by Transcor SV — and almost nothing about them can be verified online, which is an honest problem worth stating plainly.

The Mindelo waterfront

Pastel customs houses, the replica of Lisbon’s Belém tower, and a working fishing harbour that still sets the town’s clock.

Live music, most nights

The bars along Rua de Lisboa and around Praça Nova carry the morna and funaná tradition that Cesária Évora took worldwide. It is not put on for visitors.

Monte Verde

The peak above the bay is green when nothing else on the island is, and the view takes in Santo Antão across the channel on a clear morning.

Good to know

  • Carnival in February turns the whole town over; accommodation and ferries both need booking far ahead.
  • The channel to Santo Antão can be rough — the crossing is short but not always comfortable.
  • Cash is king outside hotels; the escudo is pegged to the euro so mental arithmetic stays easy.

Keep exploring

Cloud spilling over the jagged peaks and farming terraces of the Paúl valley, Santo Antão Hiking island Santo Antão No airport, no bus network — a ferry, a mountain road, and the best walking in the Atlantic. Plan the ride Turquoise shallows at Santa Maria beach on Sal with a catamaran and yachts at anchor Gateway island Sal The main international arrival point, with the flattest landscape and the thinnest public transport in the country. Plan the ride Rusting hull of the Cabo Santa Maria shipwreck standing in the surf on Boa Vista Dune island Boa Vista Sahara dunes, nesting turtles and sand roads — three hours from Sal by sea and nothing scheduled on land. Plan the ride