We loved the Azores so much we had to go back.
Our house is the one at the top on the right. View of São Lourenço The Northern hut on the coastal walk. Ruth: It’s evening and we are tucked into our little house on the hill overlooking the hobbit shire of Santa Barbara. We booked Casa Emilia for six nights, because the forecast was not good. We were ready with tea and novels for a ...
Gordon: “Just keep looking at my butt. No, not over there. Focus on the butt.” Today we visited the town of Maia, which we have been eagerly anticipating for some time. It was a slow motion triathlon: 25 kms of cycling, 10 kms of walking, and a few hundred metres of swimming (in a pool exposed to the sea). Maia is a small town stretching ...
Ruth: While Gord headed off on his bike to access a trail and continue hiking around the island, I took the day off. This will be our ninth day at the Youth Hostel in Vila do Porto. It’s interesting to stay in a place like this and watch all the different groups and individuals come and go. Yesterday a group of tired but exuberant Dutch ...
The Barreiro da Faneca Shrine to Our Lady of Fatima Ruth: Oh my, I ate too much, again! Eating in the Azores is quite simple and affordable as long as you want to eat when the locals do. It’s much more challenging to find a meal between 3:00 and 6:30 pm. Our bike rides often end in this window. Ideally we find a cafe serving ...
Gordon: We had glorious weather today, with a ride to match. All rides from Vila do Porto begin with a climb to 200 metres to the junction that feeds the network of roads on the island. Today we almost immediately dropped back down to the beach in the next bay. It’s only 4 kms from our hostel, but 8 kms and 200 metres up and ...
Resurrecting the trail markers Gordon: The island of Santa Maria has two very different halves: a gently rolling, rather arid west, and a green, mountainous east. We have spent the last couple of days cycling and walking around the western half.Yesterday we cycled to the island’s second largest town, Anjos. This was the site of the first settlement on the island, in about 1440. It ...
The view from Pico Alto. A good spot for an orange. The frog chorus at our lunch spot. Ruth: I first picked up the nickname Mocanitsa in Romania. That’s their pet name for the narrow gauge steam engine that climbs up into the heights of the Carpathian mountains. As I cycled up into those same mountains Gord started calling me his little Mocanitsa and the ...
Figueiral Cave(limestone quarry) Gordon: Santa Maria is the only island in the Azores to have a marked trail running all around it. The trail is 78 kms long and is generally walked in four or five days. Portugal uses the same naming and marking conventions as other countries in Europe, so the trail is called GR 1 SMA, or Grande Rota 1 on Santa Maria. ...
São Bras Ruth: The hostels in the Azores are frequently repurposed monasteries or convents located in the old neighborhoods, often near the port. We have been noticing them on other islands and admiring the historic buildings in which they are located. For the first time in a number of years we are staying in a youth hostel, this one in the main town of Vila ...
Gordon: Over the last few days we have had the pleasure of walking the Levada trail. This 8 km path follows a concrete lined ditch (the Levada) that collected and transported water to a pool for use in a hydroelectric generating station. The literature describes the project as one of the premier engineering achievements of the Azores - seven years in design and four in ...