Cestos Point

Cestos Point lies near the mouth of the river that Portuguese traders called Rio dos Cestos, the River of Baskets. The name recalls the baskets in which local people carried malagueta pepper to the ships. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries pepper and ivory were among the principal goods Europeans bought along this stretch of the Grain Coast. At the beginning of the eighteenth century a visiting trader described the river-mouth village as a place of well-built houses visible from the sea.