Yet again, here I sit, back in London, a nice olive glow warming my skin as I tap away at my work computer and serving as a healthy reminder of the excitement I’ve had over the past few weeks. Strangely it doesn’t feel so bad being back, having experienced what I did during what was one of the better holidays of my life.
We spent almost three weeks trekking, driving and flying through two of Portugal’s Atlantic islands and ending up in the city of Porto on its northern tip. As ever, I have no intention of giving a play-by-play of the events that have left me grinning from ear to ear even now at my desk, rather I’d like to create an image of these world beating places that have left such a marked impression on me, and cemented my eternal wanderlust as not just a whimsical addition to a dating profile, but a core principle of who I am.
The Portuguese Territories: Part 1, the Azores
What can I say about the Azores…
I could say that travelling there was the greatest surprise of my jetsetting career, or that to call them ‘the hot version of Iceland’ would be a criminal understatement. I could say that the Azores were a natural marvel the likes of which I couldn’t initially comprehend, or I could describe how my jaw was effectively unhinged in disbelief as I walked from vista to mountain ridge.
But that would mostly be superfluous hyperbole, and wouldn’t do justice to the raw, natural response that I had to the little island we found ourselves on.
The Azores, for those that don’t know, are a small volcanic archipelago in the middle of the Atlantic ocean, about a 3 hour flight directly West of Lisbon and which until recently were effectively unreachable to the casual traveller. Prior to the arrival of Ryanair tickets were a whopping £400 to get out there, via Portugal, or about half that for a boat that took two days, again from Portugal. But good old Ryanair swept in a few years ago and now they’re only a cool £60 for the four hour jaunt direct from Stanstead over the big blue ocean.
This means that the Azores are relatively unspoilt at the moment, something which probably won’t last too long and hence our decision to go out there now. The main city, on the main island of Sao Miguel, is Ponta Delgada, which I’m assured by Google means ‘thin tip’… make of that as you will. The city is small, barely more than a market town in the UK and looks like any other small European fishing town: salt blasted houses with peeling paint, narrow cobbled streets with intricate patterns and the ever present sound of seagulls fighting over discarded chips.
But we weren’t there for the city, oh no. The appeal of the Azores is not the windy little back alleys of its capital, it’s not the frankly delicious but not unique culinary delights of its little restaurants, no. The appeal of the Azores is it’s catastrophically, biblically dramatic landscapes (in fact so dramatic we had to ban ourselves from saying the word ‘dramatic’ after day two).
Renting a car and getting out of the city in the morning is the only option for the intrepid traveller. Grappling with winding roads and the odd stray cow is not only worth it, but frankly a necessity as you drive into more and more otherworldly sights. You half expect to turn a corner and see a t-rex emerging from the dense woodland above you, chasing your car down into the lake below. Then you turn another corner and suddenly you’re driving across the surface of mars, sun baked rocks and high winds sweeping dust and cloud cover across the cliff faces to either side. Then you’ll turn another corner and you’re in the jungle, another and it’s the rolling hills of England, and another and another and on until you’re so punch drunk of variable and beautiful landscapes you have to pull over and eat your sandwiches as you rearrange the neurons in your brain to be able to comprehend where you are and what you’ve seen.
The Azores as I mentioned are volcanic, and still very much active, that coupled to the harsh conditions of the mid-Atlantic is what gives it its extremely changeable and varied microclimates and landscapes that can vary literally from kilometre to kilometre. The volcanic activity also adds other dynamics too, hot spas are a regular and exciting feature, ranging from the slightly wild coastal pool of Piscinas Naturais "Caneiros", where you can expect to have a contrast of hot spring water warming you from one side as cold ocean waves batter you from the other, to the almost artificial pools of Furnas, where hot orange water at a sweat inducing 35 degrees bubbles and flows around the well maintained gardens of the Governor’s palace.
The volcano has also carved other wonders into the island; the ocean around it are as a result unusually warm, which creates a perfect place for migrating dolphins and whales to congregate in numbers I was honestly surpised by. I can whole heartedly recommend heading out on one of the rickedy old wooden boats that do whale tours (don’t take the plastic ones they are too loud and are owned by international companies, not salty old locals like our chap). We saw a whole pod of Sperm Whales, 14 strong, tail slapping and splishy splashing their way around our boat as we soaked it in. The fact that we saw anything was frankly staggering as we had fully expected not to see even a fish, to see that many, for that long was nothing more than an indulgence. We were assured that Blue Whales are also a common occurence given the warmth of the water, though I don’t know if that was just to try and entice us in for another go.
The volcano is also to thank for the incredible lakes of Sao Miguel, yet another true marvel. Because of the nature of how volcanic lakes are created, through collapsing lava chambers, the landscapes around the lakes are so... I nearly wrote dramatic… sudden is almost a better word though. They sit flat with immediate cliff faces and dynamic hillsides looming high above them, piercing out of the water coated in thick foliage and screaming birds. We made the excellent decision to visit the ‘Sete Cidades’, a collection of lakes in the North West of the island that are absolutely not to be missed. Here the drama is intensified by the proximity the lakes are to each other, two of which we decided to take a pair of kayaks out onto. I have never felt closer to my boyhood dreams of becoming India Jones or visiting Jurassic Park than when I was kayaking across the surface of a green lake with jungle towering above us, half expecting the foliage to shake and the lake to ripple as prehistoric monsters come crashing down the hillsides at us.
Luckily this didn’t happen but the entire trip took that theme, the border between fantasy and reality being trod very finely, the ease at which a touch of imagination could create other worlds whilst moving from viewpoint to caldera to remote farming village created a shivering excitement every day that we drove out of the town. Even just the driving was an utter joy. I am a ‘steady’ driver at best, always erring on the side of caution particularly in foreign countries but the roads in the Azores invited you to enjoy them; sweeping turns through mountain passes slipped by, panoramic scenes decorating the window of our slightly overloaded little car as we climbed and fell, the miles tumbling by in nothing but pure enjoyment, the ever present sense of anticipation of what would be over the next rise urging you on.
As ever on these trips it’s hard not to get a little emotional, the drama of the surroundings, the enjoyment of each activity and our penchant for playing manipulative music as we drove meant that more often than once we would find ourselves grinning aimlessly or breathlessly stunned, overloaded by what we were seeing and experiencing, perhaps buoyed by a touch of tiredness as our not very athletic bodies were forced to do the first bit of physical activity in a while.
I’ll tell one tale of what we did to finish out this little bit of reminiscence, as it really encompassed the nature of where we were and how we felt. At the end of our first day, having climbed a mountain, kayaked and swum in calderas and been battered by the ocean we found ourselves driving through a little town on the coast absolutely starving hungry, our sandwiches barely even a memory. It was a classic Sao Miguel town, low, sprawling and focussed on the shoreline. We parked up and went hunting for restaurants, Google maps is understandably inconsistent in this tiny forgotten part of the world, so we had to rely on asking around and aimless wandering. We came to a bar pumping trashy pop music with a restaurant sign in gaudy lettering above it and asked the bedraggled looking man at the door whether we could get some food.
“Seven” he said loudly and turned back inside to shout at someone in Portuguese. We shrugged and looked at the time, it was a ten minute wait, and so we sat and played with some local dogs. Seven came and we were ushered upstairs to what can only be described as a hidden gem; a beautifully set out little restaurant with immaculate tables looking out over the black volcanic sands of the beach. We devoured our food as the sun set, watching the colours change slowly as it came down and noticed something. Out in the bay stood two great stacks, pillars of rock one next to the other standing proud against the horizon, the sun curving closer and closer to the gap between the two. We paid up and ran down to the beach, bellies full and warmed by local fish and beer as we hunted for the perfect spot to watch this incredible phenomenon.
We sat finally on a little headland, the waves lapping on the rocks beneath us as the sky turned a billion shades of red and orange, purple splashes and vermillion halos radiating over the beach. Slowly the idle banter and chit chat of our group died away as we watched in silence. The sun slid slowly down, glinting off the now onyx sea as it kissed the rocks, slid behind them and then, just as it slipped to the horizon, emerged again between the two jet black stacks, a needle threading through the eye in a final blaze of colour before slipping away for the night, putting a close on possibly one of the greatest days of my life.
That was every day in the Azores. Momentous occasion followed by momentous occasion, from the microscopic to the macroscopic it was nothing more than a natural marvel of rolling hills, hot water and towering experiences. I was and still am absolutely and completely moved by it.
And then just like that we were off, off to our next stop and even more dramatic (there I said it) views and experiences, a continuation of the marvels that I will discuss… very shortly.
