Azores
Faial
You need to tie up at the visitors wharf to do the entry formalities for Faial. Just to get there, I needed to zig-zag between the anchored boats. The visitors wharf had no space whatsoever but somebody on a big cat offered to take my lines so I could double up. Clearing in was no problem as it was all handled by the Horta marina. The guy looked a bit frazzled and looked like he expected to have to hang Westward from a hook but he found a place, tripled up on the outer wall of the marina. The marina was packed.
The famous paintings done by visiting boats are everywhere, on every vertical and horizontal surface within the marina. I started getting stressed immediately about my own, where I would find space, when I would do it, what I would do. It almost spoiled my stay.
I had a drink in the famous Peter's. Its a fairly normal looking bar-restaurant with an outside terrace across the road. The only really unusual thing about it from a Hortan point of view is that it is often packed whereas the rest of the bars and restaurants are very quiet.
Friday 7th June, Horta
As you climb out of the town, the dense austere Galician atmosphere peters out in the usual motley styles of suburbia and you could be anywhere in the world. But the ugly suburbs don't last long and you are quickly in the country on roads lined with lava block walls with dark stone doorways and stairways which lead up only onto fields. There are hydrangeas in flower on both sides of the road. Faial is obviously hydrangea central.
I choose a minor road which, instead of switchbacking like the main road, leads straight up a ridge. It rapidly deteriorates into what in Australia is called an "all weather" road presumably because it is pretty bad in all weather; a dirt road, brilliant red. Both sides are now lined with tall hydrangea hedges, some of them three metres tall. They are not in flower and they are strangely ugly and depressing, making me wonder whether the hydrangea is not in fact introduced rather than native and has become a "noxious weed". Before I get to the caldera, the clouds start to come down and the view over the Canal (the straight between Faial and Pico) becomes bitty and then disappears completely behind a mass of cloud.
I keep climbing anyway, now back on the main road which has kilometre stones and stones every hundred metres; infinitely demoralizing and boring for the walker. Luckily I soon find they are counting up and not down and, as I don't know how far up the road ends, I cheer up. The end arrives with a parking lot and a ridge above it with a fence after which there is only cloud. Someone has bored a tunnel through the ridge from the parking lot and you walk through to a lookout perched on the edge of the caldera. The caldera is mildly impressive, quite deep with a couple of stagnant lakes at the bottom with white birds on them and a low cone where some secondary eruption has obviously occurred. A sign, illustrated with computer generated images of the contours of the island and photographs of distinctly ordinary looking plants, gives you the volcanic and natural history of the place and tells you it is forbidden to climb down into the caldera.
I climb up on the ridge instead where the walking track, which circles the caldera, passes. Unfortunately the cloud is total and there is no view in any direction.
Rashly, I decide to walk back down by the main road. Mistake. It must have been built with EU funds and takes at least twice the distance to do practically the same route as the road I climbed by. My laundry is waiting at a laundry which shuts at 9 o'clock. I consider cutting across the fields but the fields look so lumpy and damp and the hydrangea hedges bordering the road so thickset and impassible I decide against it. At one point I get so frustrated by its shallow gradient, which seems determined never to descend to sea level, that I am practically running. I take a secondary road which conversely goes straight down the mountain and finish the trip with aching legs. The flat valley where the road drops me is not yet at sea level and there is another steep descent just after I get into the outskirts of Horta.
I get to the laundry five minutes before it shuts and the owner is waiting for me to pick up my bundle so she can close.
Pico (briefly)
Pico beckoned from across the channel saying, “climb me!” Most of the days I spent in Horta were cloudy with smirs of rain. I waited for a fairly clear day and caught a ferry across.
There seems to be no alternative to taking a taxi to get to the Casa da Montanha. It is a long way up the mountain, at the end of the flattish green part of the cone, where the vegetation stops and the bare lava starts. It is very well organised. You have to pay to climb the mountain. You have to sign in and put a time you expect to arrive back down and you have to watch a safety film. The climb starts by going out the back door of the Casa and climbing a flight of stairs.
The Casa is at about 1250m and the peak is at 2350. They told me it would take three hours to climb and four hours to descend which sounded odd. I found the climb quite difficult. It is very steep and rough, though the path is very well marked.
The bright new marker posts run out at the edge of the crater so I guess ascending Piquinho, the ash cone poised on the edge of the crater and rising another hundred metres above it is at your own risk.
The views are fabulous. There is a vent just before the top where hot damp air rises out of the mountain. Not quite dead Pico.
I got a certificate when I got back down: I climbed Pico Mountain.
Definitely worth the climb and the entry fee. I should have hired a car, because the cost of a taxi there and back (though he only charged me the same as the trip there despite having to come back up the mountain to fetch me) makes it an expensive day, especially for one person on their own.
Velas, Sao Jorge
The guy at the marina at Velas was if anything more friendly than the guy at Horta. He said, “Welcome to paradise”
Sao Jorge is small and green and quiet it probably its best aspect is the amazing views across the straight to Pico. It is so quiet and green and restful that it grows on you. I wished that I had not spent so much time in Horta and could have stayed longer, but Ali was coming to Sao Miguel and I still wanted to see Terceira.
Monday 17th June, Sao Jorge
Motored across from Horta to Velas. Cloudless blue day. Good views of Pico which gradually reveals itself to be a great long island with a volcano at one end, rather than a round island with a volcano in the middle. Initial force 3 dropped off to force 1 to 2. I called this morning to check there was space but three boats arrived just before me. In this marina, three boats is about 30 percent of the space. Westward is stuck in a berth with fingers only six metres long. She sticks out by miles. I only hope there won't be any wind while I'm here.
Later
The marina is full of the sound of birds flying round the cliffs which loom over the place. They are all going "Ow, Ow, Ow" in funny speeded up Willy Wombat voices. When it started, I thought it was somebody's strange mobile ringtone. Some of them are now doing it with a kind of croaky noise rather than a Willy Wombat voice. Extraordinary.
Tuesday 18th June, Sao Jorge
Walk from the book. The start is steep steep steep, steep narrow road followed by stairs followed by another steep road. Great views of Pico from everywhere. Lovely countryside, fields, walls, hedges, coos. Rather European looking, very quiet. Definite feeling of contentment. Should have come here earlier.
Wednesday 19th June, En route for Terceira
Solid grey overcast. Tops of the islands all hidden. You wouldn't guess the Montanha do Pico was there.
Apparently the birds which make such an odd noise when they return in the evening are Shearwaters.
Later, SE corner of Sao Jorge
Three really beautiful waterfalls plunging into the sea, all within a mile of one another. One free-falling for maybe 50m the other two cascading. I wonder why there should be so much water in this corner of the island?
Terceira
When I arrived to tie up at the visitors pontoon at Angra do Heroismo, the guy came flying out of the office to take my lines (I hadn't called). Really the people at the marinas in the Azores are the most friendly and helpful I have found anywhere.
Friday 20th June
Lightning visit yesterday of all or nearly all the sights of Angra do Heroismo. I regret having to leave just before the festival. I'm sure It'll be great (though I don't imagine that anyone in the marina will get much sleep)
All the sights are worth seeing, the churches, the Captain General's palace, even the buildings you can't visit and to top it off a climb to the top of Cruzheiro and a view over the town and the island.
Only bemol, a meal at the cafe in the middle of the square. Horrible, barely warmed up greasy, bleuch.
The night before, I ate in the restaurant recommended by the guy at the marina; Chico (the restaurant not the guy). Pretty busy. The grilled fish was OK but it was some sort of weird fish which had cartilage as well as bones and two lumpy bits which I assume we're muscular fins. I like my fish as uncomplicated as possible. A bit expensive in the end I guess because I had a half bottle of wine. You get nice bread, butter and two spreads, tuna and anchovy.
Nice afternoon to start the crossing to Sao Miguel. Wind in SW force 2, not at all what was forecast. I motored for most of the afternoon and until 20h00 when the wind had gone into the north, more like it. Still pretty light but it'll be nicer to sleep without the motor.
Sao Miguel
The marina at Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel is a big contrast to the ones on the other islands. Where the others are small and picturesque, the Sao Miguel marina is huge and part of an enormous development of the Sao Miguel waterfront which is ugly. You get the impression that the town has overreached itself, trying to turn Sao Miguel into a cruise ship destination with a massive all concrete waterfront lined with restaurants and shops. Most of the restaurants are practically empty all the time. It always makes me sad and depressed to see enterprise and risk going to waste like this but what the heck; if they had tried to keep it more in scale with the island I'm sure they would do better.
The marina is very big and two thirds empty. It suffers badly from surge and the unpopulated extremities of the pontoons are white with seagull shit. To clear in, you have to tie up at the unprotected and dangerously surgy fuel dock. Luckily, when I arrived, there was very little wind. Later on, it would have been almost impossible single handed. Weirdly enough, this giant marina has no welcome pontoon at all.
But Ali arrived and we did the tourist around the island. Apart from the marina, Sao Miguel has lots going for it. We hired a car and did a rapid tour to Lagoa Azul and Lagoa Verde (both now Verde), the Lagoa de Fogo, discovered the nicest smell in the world at the Gorreana tea factory, swam in the volcanically heated water at Lagoa das Furnas and saw men disinterring their dinner from a hole in the ground where it had been cooking, again heated volcanically.
We failed to see the Red Bull cliff diving competition on the small offshore island of Ilheu da Vila Franca which we rather regretted but we saw the horsemen at Ribeira Seca ride round the church, and round the church and round the church magnificently apparelled.
In the Convento da Esperanca, we finally saw the Santo Cristo dos Milagres, copies and pictures of which are everywhere in Ponta Delgada . This odd image depicts Christ apparently standing (or possibly kneeling given his shortness) up to his waist in a bath filled with cherubs rather than bubbles. The sanctuary is splendid and the richness and colour made me think of Hindu India more than Catholic Portugal. You can't get very near him as the sanctuary is cut off from the rest of the convent by a massive metal grill and he is not very close to the grill. I wonder if there used to be more of him and it got lost, hence the bath. In general, the richness of churches in the Azores exceeds anything I have so far seen in mainland Portugal and Spain (though to be fair, I haven't been to any of the main Andalusian towns like Granada and Sevilla yet).
I liked the Azores and everyone I have met who has done the Atlantic crossing seems to agree. A nice surprise.
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