Day 22 - The Azores

The Portuguese Azores are in the Atlantic Ocean 950 miles west of Lisbon and 2400 east of the US. All nine major islands are of volcanic origin. San Miguel is the largest island and that is where the capital city of the Azores is located, Ponta Delgada and is the port for our day in the Azores.

Our tour today is with 6 other Cruise Critic Rollcall members in a minivan with Gary, our guide from Azorean Tours. We leave the ship in rain to meet him on the dock. Since we knew that the Azores is often rainy, we left the itinerary of our tour up to Gary. He indicated that there was no sense in going Sete Cidades, a beautiful caldera that now contains a graceful lake, which appears to have both green and blue waters. Although, it’s rare that this can be seen as weather conditions have to be absolutely perfect when the sun shines directly on it. Not going to happen today so off we went to the other end of the island to see what we could between raindrops.

Coastline view

Beautiful rolling hills of green

Our first stop was at the Gorreana Tea Factory, which produces close to 40 tons of tea annually. It’s tea is in high demand as it is not treated with any pesticides or fungicides due to the inexistence of any pest or disease in the region. We toured the facilities and stopped by the room where several women were packaging the tea bags for sale and we got to sample the tea.

Tea plants--same plant for all kinds of tea...variations in processing make the different varieties of tea flavors

The women busy packing up the tea bags for sale

Next we headed to Furnas Lake for an overview and then to the village where there are hot springs and small geysers. There is a system of faucets where the townspeople can retrieve hot water in varying degrees for use in their homes. They also utilize the hotsprings to cook food, like having a big slow cooker in the middle of the village.

Furnas Lake

The hot springs in the village

A drenched Gary explaining the various water faucets throughout the hotsprings area

At this village we had a lunch of sandwiches made with local bread, ham, and cheese, its name I can’t remember. Very good, though.

Lunch where we dry off and have a great meal

Gary tried his best to find places to stop for view of the coastline and green, rolling hillsides where it was not raining, but with limited success. He did a great job!  The beauty of this island is very apparent, even on a rainy day. We must return someday.

Flowers, flowers everywhere on the island

Sampling of the homes--all are white on this island

By the time we returned to the ship, the sun was trying to peek through so I took a picture of the sunset as we were about to sail east into the Atlantic.

Next we have 4 days at sea where we will do a lot of relaxing and reading books on our Kindles.