My final stopping point of the cruise was the
city of Ponta Delgada on the island of São Miguel in the Azores Islands of
Portugal. We reached it after one day and two nights of open-ocean sailing –
it’s about 1400 kilometres or 875 miles west of Lisboa.
On the map, it looks like the end of
the world.
Source Base Map: https://freevectormaps.com/world-maps/europe/WRLD-EU-01-0002?ref=atr
Back in the Middle Ages, I have no doubt that the Azores helped to
give birth to the persistent legends of mysterious islands to the west of
Europe which appeared and disappeared as if by magic. Such legends are found
everywhere from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean.
Well, it certainly isn’t the end of
the world now. Ponta Delgada is a beautiful modern city of seaside hotels and
quaint older buildings. A highlight in warmer or sunnier weather would be the large
public swimming pool located just across a narrow strip of harbour water from
our cruise ship terminal, on the right in this photo.
I was awake in the morning, and out
on my balcony in time to watch the ship slowly pivoting around and then backing
into the cruise terminal pier, right in the centre of town. There was a lot of
cloud and mist around, but the landscape was studded with numerous bumps and
hills on the slopes of the higher mountains in the centre of the island.
According to our tour guide, every
single one was a volcanic eruption site. Some are still potentially active, and
the island certainly has its share of hot springs, bubbling mud pools, and the
like. It all comes of the entire archipelago being perched firmly on top of the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge and straddling the border of the North American and European
continental plates, with the edge of the African plate dangerously close by.
Language lesson: our guide firmly
insisted that the name of the island group is pronounced “Ay-zors,” with the
emphasis on the long “A”. He went on to share the pronunciation of the nine
separate island names, of which the one that stuck in my mind was Flores –
“Fluoresh.” We’d already learned in Lisboa that Portuguese pronunciation is
full of lazy “sh” sounds taking the place of many different letters or letter
combinations.
On a volcanic island like this, the
directions Up and Down take on new meaning. As soon as you turn away from the
waterfront in Ponta Delgada, you are on your way Up. As we drove through the
city, we passed quaint older houses and many modern buildings from apartments
to the university.
Our first stopping point was a
botanical garden, one of many on the island. Here I had a field day photographing
the many flowers, as well as the unique trees and the artfully crafted “natural”
caverns and sinkholes. These included a bush full of the bird-of-paradise
flowers, a long-time favourite of mine.
Another sight, which I’d never seen
before, was an entire tree of blooming poinsettias.
Speaking of trees, there are these
ones – and I admired the garden's technique of hanging an identifying sign without
actually nailing it into the tree.
And then there was the landscaping, culminating
in a lovely little pensive sculpture by still waters.
From the gardens, we progressed
further uphill, zigzagging through a number of streets to reach this pineapple
plantation, all housed under glass – largely because the Azores aren’t warm
enough all year round for pineapples to grow outdoors. These ones will take two
years to mature and, when harvested, get sold in mainland Europe.
Here again we saw some assorted flowers,
adding bright notes of colour to a dull November day.
We also got a free sample of the
pineapple liqueur – at 10:30 in the morning! After having port at an even
earlier hour in Lisboa, it seems that day drinking is becoming a hallmark of
this tour! But a friend of mine assures me that these beverages are made from
fruit, which is part of a balanced breakfast, so it’s okay in this case.
Our next stop was to be at the Vista
do Rei (King's View) viewpoint, where we would get a splendid view of the remarkable Blue and
Green Lakes, nestled in a broad volcanic caldera on one of the highest
mountains of the island. Problem: the higher we went, the deeper into the clouds
we plunged, and the view quite plainly was not going to happen. The king got
luckier with the weather than we did. Here’s an internet photo to show what the
view would have looked like, if we could see it.
Instead, our guide arranged for us
to be driven down into the depths of the caldera, stopping at the bridge
between the lakes, then taking a sightseeing drive through the adjacent village
before returning up the hill and then driving back down to the city.
To wrap it up, here are a few pictures
in town of what appears to be a typical Azorean style of architecture, with white walls and dark chocolate-brown trim.
As we sailed away from Ponta
Delgada, the pilot boat veered away from the ship, taking the local pilot back
to shore. Ahead of us: six days at sea to reach Florida, taking a southwesterly
course which would lead us, hopefully, to calmer and warmer waters.
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