STRESS RELIEF Visiting six islands in the Azores SAO MIGUEL Finally on August 6, 2000 the winds were light and coming from northeast, so that was our opportunity to leave Terceira and head for Sao Miguel. At 0800 we left the harbor at Praia behind and headed out under power. As before, after about two hours of motorsailing, the engine started acting up again. Obviously the filter started to plug up again, so finally Dan removed it, and the engine ran like a charm. During our motorsail to Sao Miguel, Dan had one of his long fishinglines out behind the boat and lo and behold, he finally caught a good size fish. Out came our fish chart and lots of comparison with the fishes on it, before we finally agreed that it must be a dolphin fish or Mahi Mahi, which it's also called, and its meat was considered excellent. Duke was awed by the squirming and jumping fish on the aft deck, and also afraid I think, because he was in no hurry to jump out and investigate. When we grilled the fish on our grill, we all enjoyed its taste! About 45 miles out from Terceira that island disappeared in the haze, but by then we were about the same distance from Sao Miguel, so we could see that island good. Not until 0300 did we finally reach the harbor and tied up at the Custom dock, so we could clear Customs in the morning and find out where we could tie up for awhile. As we were coming closer to the harbor at Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel, we saw five or six very sharp lights off in the east. It was hard to figure out what it was, but I thought it was lights on shore at first. When Dan looked outside the cockpit enclosure, he saw that it was small fishingboats, and they were coming closer and closer towards us! With the binoculars I could now see them pretty good also. In each small fishingboat they had three sharp lights that lit up their boat and the waters around it. In each boat were at least four to five men, and out from the boats pointed long poles with nets on them. Dan thought that maybe they were fishing for shrimp, or whatever was around. The ocean was full of fish, as our fishfinder was showing plenty of targets under our boat. Once we got by the fishermen, we had to get around the huge breakwater wall for the main port, where the ocean going freighters and passenger ships tie up, before we could find the smaller wall that protects the marina. The marina is very small, with only four docks, and many of the local boats take up most of the slips. Along the breakwater wall boats were tied up, and that's where we ended up rafting outside another catamaran, which came in from Martinique the same morning we did. In this marina we will stay until our inverter and alternator are fixed, and how long that will take, we don't know yet. The island of Sao Miguel is the largest of all the islands in the Azores and also the most populated. Ponta Delgada is like a big city, but with a southern European flavor. The houses are packed together and the streets are very narrow. We have not seen much of the island to date, but soon we hope to remedy that. On all the islands we have visited so far, there was an abundance of color in the flowers. The most impressive flowers were the blue Hydrangea! On the island of Flores those blue bushes could be seen everywhere; they climbed up the mountainside, they seperated fields from one another and everywhere you looked there was blue, blue and blue! The hydrangea was also plentiful on Faial, but much more sparce on Pico and Sao Jorge. On Terceira I hardly saw any. Could it be that they were done blooming for the season? Most of the houses on the islands are white washed with orange tile roofs. Here and there you can see a house with another pastel color, but they are few. To add color to their houses, the trim around doors and windows are done in bright colors, and small wrought iron balconies with flowerboxes also adds to the most pleasing affect. A lot of the older houses are put together with lava rocks without any cement to hold the rocks in place. That was very evident on Faial, becuase after the last earthquake a few years ago, there was still lots of evidence to the devastation; some houses had just crumbled! The newer houses and those built today have rebar reinforced in the cement blocks and everything is cemented together. The cars in the Azores seem to be manufactured for their roads; small and narrow! Hardly any cars that we have seen are available in the US as far as I know. Small motorcycles, mopeds and mopeds with a cart behind are also very popular. A helmet must be worn while riding a motorcycle, but mufflers seem not as important, and they all drive very fast, at least it seemed like that to us! When the American boat "XTC", with Tom Blalock onboard, arrived in Ponta Delgada, we had a friend to visit with. We had met Tom in Flores the first time, ran into him in Horta, and now we ended up spending a lot of time together on Sao Miguel. To see some of the interior of the island, we split the cost of a tour with Tom, and spent one whole day sightseeing. Our taxi driver guide spoke very good english, and he gave us the history and information about the island. Since Sao Miguel is quite large, we wouldn't be able to see the whole island in one day, so we choose the middle and eastern part. We left Ponta Delgada in the morning and headed to Ribeira Grande, which is the main town on the northern coast of Sao Miguel. While Dan, Tom and Duke went along with the taxi driver, I took my movie camera and headed for an old church. The church sat high up on a hill, with numerous steps leading up to the main entrance. It was worth the climb, as from the top steps I had a gorgeous view towards the nortwest of the island. I didn't know if I was allowed to go inside the church, but when I saw a small nun hurry along and disappear behind a huge door, I followed. Inside the church it was so beautiful! All the windows had stained glass motifs in them, depicting religious scenes, the phews were elaborately carved of rich, dark colored wood, and in the front of the church everything seemed to glimmer of gold! I couldn't stay too long in the church and admire its beauty, as I knew the men were waiting for me, so soon I hurried back to the car, and we continued our sightseeing tour. Our second stop was at a working tea plantation, where they grow their own brand of tea. All around the factory were fields of tea bushes, but we didn't see anybody picking the leaves by hand. That is now done by machinery! The bushes are planted far enough apart to allow a machine to drive between them, and the bushes are kept low, so the machine can cut off and suck up the leaves in one swoop. The leaves are then brought into the drying rooms and dumped in big "dryers", where they are left till appropriately dry. The dried tea leaves are then chopped and stored in big bags until the packers can sort through the dried leaves and pick out sticks and other things that don't belong. In the final step, the tea leaves are weighed and packed into bags, which are sealed and stored in cardboard boxes ready for export. In one room in the factory, they had samples of tea ready for the tourists to try, and of course we had to sample some. Soon we were on the road again, and now we turned more inland and kept climbing up a winding road, which eventually led us to a look-out spot high above the town of Furnas. We had a beautiful view over the town and lake below, to where we were headed, after we had taken pictures and movies from high above. The road leading down to the town of Furnas was also narrow and seemed to be cut out of the rock walls. Very deep canyons with shrubs and local pine trees disappeared from view as we rounded corners in the road. Soon we arrived in the valley and headed for the "Caldeiras das Furnas", where we saw the steaming geysers and hot bubbling springs. The local people cook bagfulls of corn-on-the-cobs in these hot springs and sell to the tourists. Since we hadn't tasted corn so far this year, we bought some to enjoy later. When we finally did taste them, the corn was awful! The ears were big and the kernels huge and tough, and we thought it most likely to be cow corn. One bite was all we could handle, the rest ended up in the garbage! A short ride took us over to the "Lagoa das Furnas", where the volcanic ground is so hot, the local people use it to cook their "cozido". It's almost lika a New England boiled dinner, as the meat and vegetables are placed in one big pot. The pot is lowered down into a big hole, a cover is placed on top of that, and finally a layer of dirt covers everything. After the food has been simmering for five to six hours the earth is removed and the steaming pot raised to the surface. The food is sold in the nearby restaurants, but to be able to enjoy some of the "cozido", you have to make reservations ahead of time, as they only cook what is reserved. We did not have reservations, so we were not able to sample the food! Besides the holes in the ground for the cooking pots, there were also bubbling, grey mud spots all over, and from them a foul sulphur smell stunk up the area. The whole area around Furnas was sort of a very small version of the Yellowstone National Park in the US. Time to start heading back to Ponta Delgada, and from Furnas we drove along winding roads down toward the southern coast. We stopped in Vila Franca do Campo and bought cokes at an oudoor cafe', where we rested for awhile. The cafe' were next to a local fishing port, and it was a lot of activity going on there with boats coming and going. We also enjoyed the view out over the ocean and an island not too far off the coast, which looked like a volcano crater. The island was off limit to people, as it was a nesting place for seabirds, but if you wanted to, you could anchor off the island and swim in the protected waters around it. Our last stop on our sightseeing tour was at a pineapple plantation. On the island of Sao Miguel they grow the pineapple indoors from the beginning to the end. The "growing" houses are made of glass, which is painted white, to help keep the sun out but also to give enough light to the plants. The environment for a pineapple plant is very critical and has to be kept at a certain temperatur all the time, with not too much, but not too little humidity. In the first house were the seedlings, that were replanted into the next houses when they were about six months along. Once the seedlings had been replanted, they stayed in one spot until the fruit was ready, which took another 18 months. One plant only bears one fruit! The pineapple plant only reach about 24 inches high, and in the top a purple flower blooms, which becomes the actual fruit eventually. Even on Sao Miguel, where they grow pineapple, they are quite expensive, and I am sorry to say we never got a chance to taste them, but they are known for being very sweet and a bit different in consistency than pineapple from Hawaii. At the pineapple factory they had a small shop where you could sample pineapple liquor, which was very sweet and tasty, but pricey, so we didn't buy any! From the pineapple factory we headed straight back to our marina, paid off the taxi driver, and went to our boats to try to absorb everything we had seen during the day! It is quite exhausting being on vacation and going sightseeing! Most of the time we spent in Ponta Delgada, we waited for a package from our son. He shipped out a new inverter among other things! The package went UPS Express, but it turned out to be nothing express about it. Besides costing a small fortune to ship the package in R.I., we ended up paying over one hundred dollars more in Sao Miguel to have it delivered to our boat. You couldn't pick it up yourself, or we certainly would have done that for that kind of money. The whole experience with UPS shipping was very negative, but at least we finally received our things and started getting ready to leave the beautiful islands of the Azores. By that time we had spent about two months in the islands, and our plans had only allowed for two weeks. Since we were so far behind our planned schedule, we decided to head straight for Portugal, and not try for Ireland this year. |
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