Murdeira is a village in the island of

Sal, Cape Verde Sal (Portuguese for "salt") is an island in Cape Verde. Sal is a tourist destination with white sandy beaches and over 350 days of sunshine a year. It is one of the three sandy eastern islands of the Cape Verde archipelago in the central Atlantic ...

. The village is situated on the west coast, 9 km south of the island capital Espargos and 10 km north of Santa Maria. roughly midway along the island's major highway linking Murdeira was originally a small settlement of mostly farmers and fishermen. It was mentioned as "Mordera" in the 1747 map by

Jacques-Nicolas Bellin Jacques Nicolas Bellin (1703 – 21 March 1772) was a French hydrographer, geographer, and member of the French intellectual group called the philosophes. Bellin was born in Paris. He was hydrographer of France's hydrographic office, member of ...

. Starting in the late 1990s, a major private undertaking led to the building of a seaside tourist village in the region, called "Aldeamento Turístico da Murdeira", which grew a permanent population as the houses were gradually bought, mostly by island locals and some foreigners. The name now primarily refers to this semi-

gated community A gated community (or walled community) is a form of residential community or housing estate containing strictly controlled entrances for pedestrians, bicycles, and automobiles, and often characterized by a closed perimeter of walls and fences. ...

. As with the rest of the island, the area around the village is dominated by mostly bare soil and some desert sands. Natural vegetation is scarce, but small concentrations of ''

Faidherbia albida ''Faidherbia'' is a genus of leguminous plants containing one species, ''Faidherbia albida'', which was formerly widely included in the genus ''Acacia'' as ''Acacia albida''. The species is native to Africa and the Middle East and has also been ...

'' trees and small bushes occur in the region, near the coastline. The village sits in the center of a small

cove A cove is a small type of bay or coastal inlet. Coves usually have narrow, restricted entrances, are often circular or oval, and are often situated within a larger bay. Small, narrow, sheltered bays, inlets, creeks, or recesses in a coast are of ...

beach inside the much larger Murdeira Bay ( Baía de Murdeira), a nature reserve known for its rich underwater sealife and a small coral reef.

References

{{Sal Villages and settlements in Sal, Cape Verde Holiday villages

See also

References