Tour Guides

  
Wherever you find poverty and startling lack of opportunity as you do in Cape Verde, you often find opportunists which leads me on to my next point of reference, local people who set themselves up as official tour guides.

Many start out as cab drivers, then progress to renting a van and literally tout tourists in the streets or along the beach. They usually give you a half baked tour of the island, and charge you more that the tour is worth whilst they kidnap you and take you to their friends' shops to buy stuff that you probably don't want but might feel obliged to buy. These guides don't think you' re stupid, but they just hope you are not paying attention. They are also aware that you are disorientated from being in a new and unfamiliar environment so I'd advise you not to let your guard down. 

Sometimes they can become irritated when you ask for official paperwork such as insurance etc which it is very unlikely that they have. And they will always charge less that official guides. They may undermine official guides saying that 'they are not local how can they tell you about this country' but you do not have to be local to know about a place. 
DON"T fall for it and don't be pushed in to something if they are not the real thing. Just because they are walking around saying they are a guide it does not mean they are telling the truth. Believe me I know. People like these give their own country a bad name, who are they?.....  they are the official Cape Verde unofficial ' tour guide!'

Avoid 'unofficial guides', and ask to see paperwork, this will get rid of them quickly. 
As I said, it may be that a proper guide whether a local or not, costs a bit more but if I were you I would opt for this as official guides are safer, insured incase something goes wrong and make the effort to learn the history of the country and can articulate this better.  Even though my guides were local they were not official, they were uneducated and new little about in-depth geography, political or social aspects of their country but were more fast talking, slippery rip off artists. 

PLEASE be careful. I am not over reacting but some of these guides are so desperate for money, they see tourists as walking wallets and purses. You have been warned.