8th January 2008, Ponta Delgada - Azores
Our first port of call on the second leg and a real delight. We didn't really understand why our Spanish neighbour, Maria, was eulogising about the Azores which we thought of as another collections volcanic rock in the Atlantic, but it's really quite amazing and in some ways similar to Madeira.
We went to Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel, the largest island. Clearly volcanic, we could see the various cones, all at relatively low level from our approach. PD is a long settled town going back to the 1500s and characterised like many places in volcanic areas with much 'black and white' architecture, particularly for the volcanoes.
After docking, we took a tour (no Portuguese, relatively short stay) to the Ribeira Grande and the fire lake which, as it happened, was a wise decision. We first went around Ponta Delgarda on the dual carriageway by-pass (no doubt EU funded) and turned off to a small village where there was a pineapple plantation under glass. Given that the islands have an equitable climate, rather like the Canaries - but for all that, definitely not sub-tropical, it seemed strange given they could grow many crops that they were 'going Dutch' and growing hot weather fruit under glass. There were about a dozen or so huge green houses all with pineapples at various stages of development. The other disadvantage of growing pineapple is that even in the Caribbean its a twelve month hall for a single fruit which is followed by a need to propagate for the next crop. In the Azores it takes 24 months, so when you next purchase a £1 pineapple, think of all the effort that goes into it. Needless to say, though, there was a motive in taking us to this place which was to flog pineapple liqueur which M found too sweet and D found too early in the morning.
Afterwards we crossed the island at its narrowest point (about 12 kms) to the north coast. The scenery was most unusual and, perhaps, more like rural Britain than anywhere we have previously been to. The most British features were very green grassy fields, narrow, windy roads, dry stone walls enclosing smallish fields and many rural buildings and small settlements which could easily have been Cornwall or Wales. Quite odd. Over the ridge, we then went down to the only other town on Sao Miguel, Ribeira Grande (Big River). This was situated just inland from the mouth of the river and a steepish, incised valley and again was of a certain vintage with three or four old churches, an eight arch high road viaduct over the river and a neat municipal park and Tourist Information office down the sides of the valley. It was neatly clipped and manicured in the public areas but a little more sleazy in the back streets, but nonetheless authentic in a Portuguese sort of way. We liked the town and needless to say the man in the Tourist Office spoke perfect English. We Brits really are pathetic in our attempts to speak to any foreigner in their own language. We walked down the valley and under the arches to a very wild Atlantic Ocean with breakers about two metres high and much detritus washed up on the beach - most of it plastic these days. (Even between Phuket and Pinang on the last leg, twenty kms out to sea we were amazed at the incidence of plastic/polystyrene crap in the water even though it's illegal to dump plastic at sea).
After a half hour in Ribeira Grande was proceeded to climb one of the volcanoes in our small bus. Initially, it was still very British like. We wound our way up a wooded valley and the clue, as we passed a small car park, was the comment from our guide that at the end of a ten minute forest walk was a small waterfall and a pool with warm water that many visitors bathe in. Ten minutes up the valley all became apparent as the mountain positively steamed. There were geysers etc and a number of industrial establishments. These turned out to be the Azores thermal electricity company. We understand bores are made hundreds of metres into the mountain and the volcanic heat is used to generate electricity. About 40% of the islands requirement comes from this source. Most interesting. As we approached to top of the climb - and as we aid, not particularly high - we passed over the crater lip and got a magnificent view of the caldera and crater lake. The sun was shining strongly at an acute angle and the declination back to the south of the island was such that it appeared the water just ran over the crater lake and straight into the sea which was about 600 m below. This was an illusion as it was about 6 kms away. The cloud was closing in and as we climbed higher up the rim unfortunately we passed straight into the cloud and lost all views until we hit the top and came down the other side. This was scenically even more British, unbelievably green and small scale.
We returned to the ship via the suburbs of PG some of which had nice smallish beaches and hotels. The sand, though, was black. We got back and left early afternoon.
