Travelblips

AAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!

Driving BLIND!!!

I was woken from a pleasant sleep in the suprisingly comfortable dorm bunk bed on the Ferry, Caribou, by the impression an announcement had been made. I looked at my watch and saw it was 6.15am and figured we had to be getting close to Nova Scotia now. It hadn’t been at all rough on the crossing – just felt like every now and then we went over a minor crack in the road….

I staggered out of bed, still tired and asked a lady ‘putting on her face’ in the restroom if an announcement had been made. She was in the same boat as me (literally… ha ha!) and was under the impression something had been said… But then speculation was put to rest at 6.30am as an annoucement now occurred in the dorm rooms and the lights ramped up. Yes. We were expecting to dock in an hour…

I grabbed my stuff and went down a deck to the vast cavernouos seating area which had a few people scattered here and there. I took a seat by a window and gazed out into… fog. Complete fog. The ship was sailing very quietly on weakly choppy grey waters. It was like being in the Bermuda Triangle. Except it was raining. Absolutely pouring…

As I sat there staring as far into the fog as I could see (which I think was about 10m), I became aware around 6.55am that we were passing a shape… a lighthouse shape to be precise. Land ho! We had entered the harbour. It took another 3/4s of an hour before we were summoned to our cars. I went down and thought I was parked near the front – but didn’t realise how close to the front until I couldn’t find my car (I was only 5 minutes after the announcement) and saw the 2 cars in front of me were gone! I gulped and dashed into my car as I thought I was holding up the line, but the men were starting to get a series of trucks and trailers out and I would have been held back anyway.

Finally after getting the trucks and another line of cars out first, it was my turn – and I was at the front! I emerged from under the cover of the ferry into an absolute complete torrential downpour of rain – I had to hastily turn my wipers onto maximum speed. Then I crept out, somewhat cautiously, but aware of all the anxious people behind me. I drove straight onto a multilane freeway where everyone behind me immediately sped past me, forking into different lanes. I scanned the road signs above through my furiously swishing windscreen wiper, but they all seemed to point to a myriad of highways going all over Nova Scotia – but none indicated the Transcanada!

Aaaaaaagh! Driving blind in torrential rain without a clue as to where I am going!

So, being a typical driver… I just kept going…. and eventually, after about 10km, I was able to place myself on the map and work out I was on the right highway! Phew! It hadn’t felt wrong.

I drove for about an hour and then pulled over to grab some breakfast at a nice looking coffee shop on a lake. In fact, depsite the rain now varying between torrential downpour and heavy drizzle, I thought Cape Bretton looked like it might have a lot of potential to be very scenic in spring and autumn! The trees somehow seemed denser and healthier than the poor hard done by ones on Newfoundland, and there were more (currently leafless) desciduous trees. However, with the rain, I was very very very glad I was not doing this run in winter as I had feared I might have to!

After breakfast, I drove some more, pausing only at some place which claimed to be open and selling gifts (I wanted a fridge magnet). It might have been a mistake… As I pushed open the nearly stiff door, it was suddenly yanked open and spry man in his late 50s boomed at me “WELCOME TO MY STORE! WHERE ARE YOU FROM?”

I meekly said Newfoundland, and he picked up his phone and bellowed into it “I”VE GOT A YOUNG LASS FROM NEWFOUNDLAND HERE!” He turned to me and asked, “WHERE ABOUTS?” I said I was originally from Australia but travelling from St John’s. He turned back to his phone “SHE’S FROM AUSTRALIA! I HAVE To TALK TO HER!”

He hung up and then beckoned me over to his crowded counter, plastic wrapped gifts in partially torn boxes tumbled out and over and down to more stuff spilling out of stacked boxes on the floor.

“HERE! You”VE JUST COME OFF THE FERRY – HAVE THIS!” and he handed me a pamphlet of the Ferry… Why would I need that after just getting off the ferry?!

“YOU MUST BE THIRSTY! HERE, HAVE AN ORANGE JUICE. I’LL POUR IT WHILE YOU SIGN THIS BOOK!” he boomed at me, trying to juggle 2 polysterene cups, a carton of orange juice and a book with a pen which he was hastily writing in todays date.

I signed the book as he filled up our cups, a never ending barrage of questions coming from when suddenly he spun back to the phone.

“I’VE GOT A LASS HERE FROM OS-TRAYLIA! YOU HAVE TO SAY HELLO! SHE’S FROM OS-TRAYLIA! YES…YES… JUST LIKE OUR MISSIONARY!”

Missionary??? Yikes! Suddenly the phone was thrust at me.

“Hello?” I hestitantly said.
“Hi there. So Mr. Puttipas says you are from Australia,” a resigned ladies voice said to me.
“Yes…”I replied.
“Well, you are in good hands with Mr Puttipas,” she said then wished me farewell and safe travels.

Mr Puttipas or whoever he was, then proceeded to drag me around the junk in his shop first making me sign some petition for a one legged runner and squeezing $10 out of me (well… it was for charity) but then tried to sell me some other awful stuff which i didn’t need. He broke off half way to sprint to his phone and then bellowed into it,

“HELLO? WHO IS THIS?? AH. DO YOU KNOW JOHN SMITH? NO? WELL YOU SHOULD! HE’S OUR LOCAL POLITICIAN AND HE’S USELESS! I WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU KNOW WHO HE IS SO YOU DON’T VOTE FOR HIM!” GOT IT? JOHN SMITH! USELESS. GET RID OF HIM!” and then he hung up (I am making up names here… I can’t remember his name exactly or his politician…).

Then he worked out I wanted a fridge magnet, dragged me over to his feeble collection of 5. I didn’t like any of them but picked the least offensive one and bought it, refusing to accept his deal to buy a pink Halifax baseball cap in the process and then began to make my exit. He let me go as the phone rang… but chased me out to the car to give me some pamphlet of a museum near Halifax, the opposite direction to where I was going…

I drove 200m and found another souvenir store. It might have been less painful to go in there!

The rest of the drive across Nova Scotia was fitful – with periods of heavy cars and few cars. I liked it more once I got past New Glasgow and the Transcanada became a dual carriageway with a 110km/hr limit on it – and no cars! My car did not, and with having to drive through rain, into a gale force headwind and at a higher speed than it was used, we knotched up the worst mileage it has ever done for me on a lonmg distance rain, barely getting above 24.3 mpg…

The dual carriageway continued into New Brunswick, which I got to about 1pm, but the cars behind me all evaporated…. The landscape became flatter… and after Moncton, I became intrigued by these lakes by the road which shouldn’t be there. By the time I was approaching Fredericton I realised it was flooding… Spring melt was on! I arrived at Moncton mid-afternoon in another rain squall and my friend found me drenched and wet, pathetically pumping air into my tires in another rain squall as I was convinced they were too soft….

Kilometers driven today: 661km
Total driven since leaving St John’s, Newfoundland: 1570km

Popularity: unranked [?]

The very bland start to Kilometer Zero, Transcanada Highway

A bit late… I know. But I wrote up my adventures as I was travelling across from the East Coast to the West Coast of the 2nd largest country in the world Canada – and then didn’t post them very promptly… So here is my journal as I drove across Canada.

Today, I escaped the rock

I began punctually – but got delayed by the B&B guy asking for payment. Silly me… I assumed that because I’d booked it online with a well known travel website, it was prepaid…

Then because I’d been up late the night before I’d missed breakfast so I went to get a hot chocolate but couldn’t park close to The Coffee Company (the coffee shop I decided would be my last hot chocolate stop here.. It was either there or Coffee Matters…).

Then I had to do the grand loop to really start this trek across Canada at Kilometer Zero. Sadly, even though you’d think Newfoundland would clear half a forest and put in a large park around an enormous stake emblazened with “TRANSCANADA HIGHWAY: KILOMETER ZERO.” there is nothing but a sign pointing to the local rubbish tip to the right and the Transcanada to the left. Yes, yes… Some might like to point out there is a peg near the railway museum representing Mile Zero when Newfoundland had a train line… BUt that is not the start of the Transcanada Highway.

And in typical fashion, it was about another 20km before I remembered to reset the odometer…

Anyway. Voyage underway, I had to pull off almost immediately to take a detour to run an errand at the mall – and say goodbye to my former collegues since they were close to the location of the errand. That was sad – they were really, sadly, the only friends I made here – and one of them was leaving the province as well and the other had resigned for a different job. Times are achanging…

So detour aside, I retraced my path back along the Gushue Highway to the Transcanada and truly began the drive!

Waiting to board the ferry with my car in the foreground

For the first couple of hours until Clarenville, I had already driven it previously on a trip to Bonavista. So I just enjoyed listening to Sirius radio – love the fact I am no longer restricted to gospel and country music – which inevitably meant me playing my own CDs, when driving long distance! But now… now I can drive along in my own private discoteque!

However, once past Clarenville, ironically at exactly 1pm, just under 2 hours after hugging my former collegues goodbye, I began a conversation with my car, pointing out that from here until somewhere east of Thunder Bay, this was virgin territory for both of us, and after that, virgin only to my car as I had previously driven the Transcanada from Quebec back in 1996. My car reacted stoically by maintaining the 105km/hr I’d set it at. I love cruise control…. I think this is my first truly long distance drive with cruise control…

Initially, the countryside looked remarkably unchanged from the land I was already familiar with – spruce trees, lakes, and denuded brown spindly limbs of some desciduous tree. Spring has not arrived! As we trekked every north (far be it for the Transcanada to go straight across Newfoundland to Port-Aux-Basque, my stepping stone off the island. No… it followed a large northwards arc. Something to do with a larger bog inbetween…

Last contact with Newfoundland closing - ramp lifting up

And so the hours rolled on by and the kilometers clicked over and my car steadily consumed fuel… Its an estimated 9 hours to drive from St JOhn’s to Port-Aux-Basque…

The next milestone after entering virgin driving territory after Clarenville was passing through Gander, apparently one of Canada’s top 10 places to live. Grand Falls-Windsor. Couldnt’ work out why myself… Nothing special there either – just a bit bigger than Gander.

I also pointed out to the car our northern most point on our trek across Newfoundland at Springdale, telling it it will never ever be so far north in Newfoundland again – I might, but I didn’t think it would be in this car! My car responded by drinking up a bit of extra fuel and my mileage dropped for a few kilometers…

Then more long empty miles, occasionally passing by frozen lakes and patchy snow amongst endless spruce and occasionally birch trees before finally starting to see some topographic relief as I approached Deer Lake. Lets not call it mountains… but defintely hills which were a bit more tightly clustered than the low gentle mounds I’d been driving past for 5 hours… One area north of Deer Lake, near Sandy Lake I believe, looked like it might even be lush and green come spring! But the blue smears across the grey ice of the lake today didn’t suggest that was going to be in the next couple of weeks.

Past Deer Lake, the countryside continued to be potentially attractive and ‘hilly’ and the sky continued to vascilate between threatening and not threatening (yesterday the news had issued a severe wind warning for the Port-Aux-basque area which didn’t bode well for my crossing this evening!). I got to Corner Brook about 6ish and decided to pull over for dinner. Corner Brook looked quite nice! And it also made me wonder about town pairing in Newfoundland – St John’s and Conception Bay South, Gander and Grand Falls-Windsor, Deer Lake and Cornerbrook… Even had its own, what looked to be little but steep ski resort of Marble Mountain…

First gap between ferry and Newfoundland - all ties now severed

After dinner, it was a lonely desolate stretch to Port-Aux-Basque, still a good 235km or so southish. The sky gradually darkened – a combination of setting sun and slowly sinking cloud cover. A sign warned me that the next 20km was subjected to gusty winds – and my car was certainly blown around! It also occurred about the time I began passing a never ending stream of trucks going in the opposite direction – I wondered if they were off the ferry… I think they were! And at the end of the 20km stretch, the road curved gently to the SE and suddenly, it was dead calm and no more gusts. And fog came down. Actually, I’d been pretty lucky to have a clear drive all the way across the island, even if it wasn’t particularly clear right now!

I got to Port-Aux-Basque around 9.15pm. The only significant delay was at the fruit stop (I guess…) – asking if I had any vegetables. I said no, just some banana’s (and kicking myself for buying breakfast fruit just as I was about to leave an island). No, they didn’t care if I had any banana’s – did I have any vegetables? No??!! Well, go right on through and you’ll be directed to where to wait.

So within 10 minutes of arriving at Port-Aux-Basque, my car was parked behind and beside a few lines of cars all ready to get on on of Canada’s largets, ferries, The Caribou. I heard someone say they were going to start loading the ferry in the next 15 minutes or so! Cool… Got here just at the right time! Was a bit worried getting there 2-3 hours before the ferry left was too early, but guess I forgot about the fact it takes time to load car ferries…. And for all the empty deserted road before me when I drove from Corner Brook to Port-Aux-Basque, there were a lot of cars there!

At 9.45pm exactly, they asked all car drivers to return to their car. I was in mine having refreshed myself in the terminal before deciding I felt rather out of place amongst people who were chain smoking and as wide as they were tall… That and the fact it was a souless place with no reason to encourage loitering!

But it was to be another 50 minutes before I finally turned my engine on and went up the ramp and inch by inch, drove onto the ferry where a veritable army of men in orange suits were trying to get us all parked and tucked away… Once slotted in, I grabbed my backpack and bag and went up to find my dorm – my ticket just said Dormitory 1 – turned out I had the first bunk number and there were 2 dorms! Still. $16 bucks for a bed on a crossing which can be 4-8 hours is pretty good value, albeit, you are surrounded by many other people. But it was dark and quiet and I was given a blanket and pillow…

I then asked the dorm manager to please look after my backpack so I could watch us leave. It was only 11.05pm by the time I found the observation deck – and it was just POURING with rain. So even though there was a bigger observation deck up above… I wasn’t going up there as there was no shelter!

No more land between me and rapidly departing ferry from Newfoundland. Next stop: Mainland Canada

I watched them squeeze in a few more trailers and then trucks (one parked next to my car – better not have a rough crossing!) and then they closed the deck to anymore traffic. It was 11.20pm. I took pictures of the car ramp coming up. There was not a single soul out there with me! One guy rushed out with his camera case, said hello, then ran back inside. Huh! I would have thought a few people would have wanted to watch the departure, but most were either sleeping already or eating or winding down in chairs. The rain deterred them… or they were all seasoned truck drivers and this crossing was just one of many many indistinguishable crossings!

At 11.33pm, the engines really kicked in and I got pretty excited – this ferry was much more powerful than the little icebreaker I’d been on a mere 3 days ago… At 11.40pm, we started to pull away from the dock!

I watched the foaming water appear as the ferry pulled away from its snug dock and sea now separated me from Newfounland – my last contact with the island was severed – I was now en route to mainland Canada and I didn’t know – dont’ know if or when I will ever be back to Newfoundland. I tried to compose some sort of mental farewell speech, but all I could think of really was I’d fulfilled my obligations when i ranted at St John’s on New Years eve – I’d made a couple of good friends, I had got good work experience, but the last 6 months of stress upon stress at work and the hardest summer in the field ever last summer had just left me tired of Newfoundland and Labrador. I was more excited at the widening gap then nostalgic and sad I was leaving.

At 11.48pm we rounded the lighthouse for Port-Aux-Basque, its fog horn blaring periodically and quite audible above the rain sloshing off the steps above and the engines. I watched it retreat for a few minutes into the rainy mist and as the orange lights of the port disappeared behind the headland as we turned SW and only a few house lights remained, I bid Newfoundland one more adieau and came inside and crawled back into dorm bed (very soft and comfy!)

Total kilometers driven: 904.3km

Popularity: unranked [?]

Up and at ‘em! Bright and early! Boot them passengers off the ship!

By 8.30am, everyone was gone and it was just staff left milling around on the dock. The dock. It was a miserable dock.The sky was overcast and grey and occasionally spat on us. The harbour at Ponta del Gada on Sao Miguel Island is a huge industrial affair built I presume to the major port for all good leaving and exiting the Azores. Our view of the city itself was blocked by an enormous white passenger cruise ship. Several 1000 passengers. Our agent was bitching at the Expedition Leader that he had wanted us in before them – only a couple of 100 on our ship vs several 1000 of them to clear!

I had to shuffle my bags around on the ship. I was not due to fly out until 3.00pm and the next cruise was full, so I had to vacate my cabin as others were moving in as others moved into their cabin and all the way down the line until passengers moved into a passenger cabin. Eventually my bags ended up in the doctors medical office. Being there, I ran into the doctor and her hubby and we decided to walk into town together for the morning. Their goal was to get on the internet, mine was to buy something for my sister as it was her birthday in a few days time and I was meeting her for breakfast at London airport tomorrow… The lace and embroidery seen so far on this trip didn’t do it for me as far as souvenir’s go…

Our Azorean guides recommended we go to the Atlantico Shopping Centre. A big shopping mall, but apparently a long way from downtown. Good 20 minutes walk… They must have seriously underestimated how far we folks from downunder will walk!

Anyway, in the end it was a large group of us who went into town, strolling noisely along the manky concrete wharf, making a large loop around some fort and then paralleling our course on the other side of the harbour. Cars raced by us and historic buildings lined the esplanade, and people milled everywhere. Tourist people… There maybe a large cruise shipin town, but it was still Sunday, a day of rest in a Catholic country and the shops and most tourist attractions were closed.

I walked with everyone to the main plaza, lined with lots of slightly dirty old gothic looking buildings, and then peeled off to the north and into the town proper with the doctor and her husband. We were assured by one and all that we’d find this shopping centre – all roads lead to it…

At first we walked along narrow shop-lined streets, filled with the usual sunglasses and watches and interspersed with lace and embroidery shops. All closed. I felt strangely linerated though to not have to take photographs, so I didn’t.

Then we entered  a more residential area and then we got lost. We asked some young kids stuffing themselves into an ever decreasing space in a tiny hatchback (must have been at least 7 in there…), one of whom spoke english and just told us to cheerfully keep going the way we were going.

So we did until we came to  a main road. At that point, our street terminated and we didn’t know whether to go right or left to hit the shopping centre. We asked another fellow who got so caught up in trying to tell us he didn’t speak English, I in the end, just cut across him and said “Atlantico!” Ah! he cried, and then began excitedly giving us directions in portugese, fortunately accompanied with enough hand gestures to know we were to go left.

A few minutes later we were walking through the car park under a giant pink building, the Atlantico Shopping Centre. Once inside… it was your bog standard shopping mall with card, clothing and household goods store. I was not going to find any present here! So I followed everyone up to the top floor where they discovered the wifi was not free, but there was an internet cafe there. So while they checked their email, I had part of a thick sweet hot chocolate which I couldn’t finish – I do not like the spanish version of hot chocolate!

After a while, I wandered off for a look at the shops anyway, came up empty handed and tried to find everyone else. I failed so I just started back to town. I was going to have to go for the taxi to the airport soon anyway. Not that the airport was very far away… Airplanes seemed to thunder over the ship all morning as we were letting people off the ship!

The esplanade area was still choked full of cruise ship passengers, all desperately angling for a seat at one of the few cafe’s or milling around in the scant hanfdul of souvenir shops selling cheap goods from China (but markes Azores). I dawdled back to the ship, catching up with the party I had abandoned at the mall in the process.

I called for a taxi, getting someone who barely spoke english and told me I had to be at the port entrance in 5 minutes – it would probably take me a good 10 minutes to trundle my bag down there! But he refused to send a taxi to the ship. I hastily grabbed my bag, said goodbye to everyone and began the long trundle.

Suffice to say, there was no taxi waiting for me at any of the 3 strategic places (all 100m apart) that a taxi could have been waiting for me. So I stood by the roadside and hoped a taxi would come by soon… Although apparently most of the taxi’s had been grabbed by the cruise ship passengers and were probably all roaming around the countryside!

But one did come by after 15 minutes and I was able to flag it down. 10 minutes later I was at the airport, with 2 hours to spare. And the counter wasn’t open, but it opened shortly afterwards.

I was flying Air Azores, but there didn’t seem to be any suitable plane sitting on the tarmac. Sure enough, those planes shortly left. Eventually a large Air Azores plane came in… but seemed destined for an island, and then a large SATA (portugese airline) plane came in. It looked vaguely like it could be the only one that was capable of taking us on the 2.5 hour flight to Lisbon… And it had arrived 10 minutes before it was due to take off. I was vaguely concerned – I did have a connecting flight to London to catch in Lisbon!

Anyway, they got us all on and off the ground, a scant 50 minutes late. There was still time to make my connecting flight to London, no further delays…. The SATA plane was surprisingly comfortable, but packed – and I was in the aisle… ‘Twas a boring 2.5 hours.

Once in Lisbon, the plane parked way way away… and we had to be bussed in! Damn in tarnation… Then I ran for my gate, and had to go through immigration. I just arrived at my gate when they called it, which suprised me as I had made it with 45 minutes to spare. But no… it was because we were going to be bussed back out again… and we were all made to wait at the bottom of the stairs (or on the stairs) where a toddler sat in its pram and just screamed and screamed and screamed for 40 minutes, its screams echoing around our glass chamber until all of us were on the verge of smothering it (its parents of course just ignoring the toddler).

On plane… take off… tranquil flight to London… In hotel by 11.30pm as predicted. End of cruise… Just the flight back to St John’s tomorrow.

Popularity: 8% [?]

It had been decided the day before that we’d come in alongside at Sao Roque do Pico on the north side of the island as strong, gusty winds were forecast for the south side – and Lajes was a little exposed! I gather we had to zodiac the passengers in there and given the problems we’d had at the Selvagen Islands, that wasn’t desired – plus we’d obtained charts for the harbour from the pilot at Faial…

So the ship fired up engines around 4am and by 6.30am we were crawling in. Hannah announced Pico, the 2300m+ volcano which gives this island its name was looking particularly good in the early morning light so I staggered out and took some pictures as the northern side of the peak bathed in the dusty orange-pink sunrise. Even now, clouds rolled and swirled around it, but it was largely visible. However, the large band of white behind it suggested if we had docked on the south side as originally planned, we would not be seeing Pico right now!

Sao Roque do Pico was a small harbour and we pretty much took up the entire dock there. It had a few paintings from passing ships, but looked to be in pretty sad shape after Faial! But there was one pretty amazing large one which looked like it had 3D potential (which I can never see without taking a picture…).

By 8.30am, those of us going on the tour were on the bus – some people had been to the island before and didn’t want to do the tour. So we began by driving east along the coast, gradually rising higher and higher above the sea. The landscape was lush and green and Fernando gave us some blurb from time to time.

However, soon we entered the inversion layer clouds and mist and vision was drastically reduced to mist shrouded green grassy fields about 50m in visible length and bush-drenched small streams. It was pretty evident (to me) that by knocking down the trees for agriculture, the Azoreans had destabilised the soil and it was all gradually sliding down to the ocean giving the landscape the effect of a very rumpled green blanket.

About half an hour later, we emerged (sort of) from the clouds and commenced our drive along the Azores longest straight road – all 8.5km of it, past Pico itself. Pico, the (2) new cones rose majestically up out of the landscape, now a moderate grey colour, making it look like (and sorry to use this analogy!) a grey breast (that was the effect of the second cone right at the peak of the larger cone…).

The bus stopped at a vantage point and we all got out and took pictures. It was amazing how even in the 15 minutes we were there, the clouds rolled up one side, down the other, around from both sides and then swept off down the hill to the east, north and northwest… It was amazing we could even see it!

Then we were bundled back in the bus and drove a short distance to a pullout and a gated paddock. Here those heavy duty hiking boots worn by some passengers was put to test as we clomped along a dirt trail to a tiny well concealed cave in the ground, overgrown with grass and fern…

…Furna de Frei Matias – a lava tube! Admitedly a small one, and a much larger, more impressive – and adventurous one apparently existed closer to the shoreline, but it was closed until May.

Since I was pretty much on exclusive photo duty today, I stood up above the cave and took some pics of people scrambling in. Despite the excessive amount of people NOT wearing appropriate footwear, most gamely and cautiously went in.

I took my place and went in as well and couldn’t see anything but the light at the end of the tunnel, about 50m away initially. I broke out my feeble little ‘see your keyhole for your key’ light and shone that – realising that some of the people around me needed it more than me.. so I shone it one the ground, it barely giving enough light to even show the ground, but it was enough to prevent some stumbling!

Meanwhile, I took a photo of the cave – brief flash and then I looked at the screen. Huh! It was all misty inside! Just standing there in the very poor light given off at either entrance and by people’s torch’s and it was pretty clear air – take a picture and it was misty!

But the rocks were also interesting – grey-black or red and seemingly eroded into long slimey rivulets by the water dripping down from above.

At the end of this short tube, many people chose to climb up the green grassy mound that occurred where the tube had collapsed to leave a hole in its roof and escape the tunnel. I chose to push a little deeper.

Here the tube was split into two levels – clearly one tube had formed then another up above it! The upper tube was really just a cave – barely going more than 15m into the earth. The lower one was temporarily blocked as someone had taken a tumble… But it was clearly exposed because of a collapse in its roof as well. How many lava tubes lay beneath us that we couldn’t see because the roof hadn’t collapsed?!

I went down the rocky steps – carefully since the bottom two were loose – and entered. Only one other person was in there, about 40m in, shining his torch along the jagged rocks, peering at them. The tunnel sort of merged with the one above so I was able to get a picture of both levels – pretty cool! I got to spend 5 minutes in there before we were hearded back onto the bus….

From there, (I was last out…), we drove to the Madelena wine district on the western end of the island, another UNESCO World Heritage site… one gets the impression these islands managed to get so many UNESCO sites in an effort to get money…. We got to spend about 45 minutes at some wine yard, the first 30 milling around their vast courtyard looking at dragon trees, walking along a promenade into the shallow vine yard and looking at the silent equipment – no labels so didn’t have much clue what most of it was or where it fit in the wine making process….

The thing that makes the vineyards here so different from other parts of the world is the vines grow along the ground in little enclosures built of basalt blocks to protect them from the wind. I believe I read somewhere as well that the basalt walls also create a microclimate allowing more moisture to condense on the plants… Looking at the scrubby vines just beginning to leaf, I didn’t want to think how they harvested them, crawling on the knobbly basaltic ground!

After 30 minutes, we were allowed into a 2 story building called ‘Exhibition’ hall – but there were only about 10 small odd paintings – but more importantly for everyone, a table laid out with bottles of wine, fresh bread, local cheese and jams! Compared to other buffets for some reason, everyone descended on this one like a feeding frenzy!\ and they never let up until we left. I must say though, the cheese was nice – creamy with a pleasant flavour and particularly nice with the fresh bread (not the doughy fresh bread native to the Azores though – that was disgusting!)

After everyone was (I have to presume) partially satiated, we drove around the coast a small distance to goodness knows where where amongst some basalt buildings and a small walkway through an old basalt flow at the coast, there was a tiny shop letting people sample Pico liquers made from all sorts of fruits. I don’t think that poor fellow was as successful at selling his liquer (I only tasted the honey and didn’t manage to more than wet my lips before giving up on it – fire water!) as the wine (the wine had suckered in a lot of people because it was nice – and super cheap at 4-8 Euros’ a bottle. Given their limited production each year, I was surprised it was so cheap….

Everyone returned to the ship for lunch. I was so exhausted, I slept… Then around 2pm, we were bundled back onto the bus – a vastly reduced number – to go and see the whaling museum at Lajes. We were supposed to have seen it this morning but with it being Saturday and all, they didn’t open until 2pm….I guess a lot of people also bailed because they’d just sent the graphic gore (Ok, pictures told the story as the machinery sat quiet) of Faial yesterday….

Lajes turned out to be a small fishing village with the usual white houses and black trim. Some of the eaves were painted brighter colours. It was shrouded in clouds now that we were on the north side (even Pico had had more clouds when we left than earlier this morning) and it was a pretty grey day with a stiff breeze blowing. The harbour was only big enough for yachts and little basalt peaks stuck up out of the water all around the harbour mouth. Yes… it would have been an interesting, bumpy zodiac ride in for the passengers!

The museum turned out to be a modern exhibit with no signs of gore or old factories at all! We walked into the entrance into a bright airy room with white walls dotted with artful photographs of dolphins and whales in dead calm water. The bulk of the room contained artfully arranged glass cabinets on a pale wood floor with examples of scrimshaw in the cabinets. The next room contained lots of extracts from letters or a diary of Franklin D Roosevelt, who had visited the Azores on a newly commissioned American military ship for a few days I guess… Pico’s claim to fame!

I then went to the other side of the museum… replica (original?) of a whaling boat… examples of the tools they used tastefully arranged and lit along the walls… a library with books on the history of the Azores and whaling… All very sterile!

After about 5 minutes, I was back outside, wondering what to do for the next 25 minutes as the town wasn’t very big… So I took some pictures of the old fishing huts now all renovated into café’s and hotels with backpackers sitting in small groups at the tables. I wandered out into the marina… took some pictures, came back… looked into the few souvenir stores.. still uninspiring.. and then waited. Lajes… not a town you can really spend more than a few minutes in – unless going to hike there I guess! Maybe that long lava tube was nearby given the concentration of backpackers here?!

The bus drove back to the ship and we set sail around 3pm. Pico was now wrapped in a shiny white band of lenticular cloud, smoothly rising up and over it, barely a bump to represent where the peak was. But the rest of the north side of the island was in sunshine!

The ship crossed the channel to Sao Jorge, taking an couple of hours. Near the eastern end, we came mildly close as there were several waterfalls tumbling over steep cliffs – but this being the south side of the island (and a long one at that) it was all cloudy and misty and the visibility wasn’t very good. Few birds though….

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It was a bleak morning in Faial – grey, windy, damp… Low cloud obscured the upper reaches of Horta, the town we had docked in, which from the ship appeared to be a long town punctuated with tall churches here and there – lots of tall churches!

However, a touring we must go so by 9am we were on the bus and heading to the western edge of the island to Capelhinos, site of an eruption in 1958. Along the way, we passed the airport, functional but apparently very short and exposed so only specially trained pilots could land there and lots of green fields. Entire island is green apparently… A far cry from the arid lands of Cape Verde with pockets of green on one half of the island! No, the Azores apparently live under cloud and rain for 9 months of the year, clearing only for the summer rush from June to August!

We also passed a few tiny tiny buildings which had crowns on top of them as opposed to crosses and apparently these are the tiny churches of the Church of the Holy Spirit – a special church for the Azoreans to retreat to in times of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions! Not a pagan church but pretty much has Christian values.

Eventually we arrived at Capelhinos, and the bus disgorged us at the end of a busted up ramp for boats with ash and sand obscuring much of the landscape. This was a great whaling site – where the whaling boats launched from back in the days they whaled. The eruption kind of messed that up – eventually burying most of the town!

I wandered down the ramp to the turbulent, restless turquoise and grey sea, taking the odd photo of the cross-bedding produced from the 1958 eruption. Its kind of interesting because it makes very clear no volcanic eruption is one explosive event and that’s it – this one was carefully documented over a period of about 7 months with various stages and types of eruptions!

On the way back up to the lighthouse where apparently a new interactive centre was open, one of our Azorean guides pointed out a buried house to me. All that could be seen was the top of the house and some blants anchored in the dirty sand! Huh! Elsewhere, one house was being excavated and they were about 10ft down. Somehow… it didn’t look like it had been part of a volcanic eruption because of the evacuation – much better just to have eves and the odd window poking out to represent the relentless power of a volcano!

The lighthouse was still partially buried. They seemed to have dug down to the entrance and some ways around it, but it was clearly still quite buried in 3 sides. However, descending down through the white concrete and glass, I was suddenly thrust into a very large, very clean, rather empty auditorium. Azoreans encouraged us to browse amongst the extensive collection of books for sale laid out on tables (mainly in Portuguese…) or buy something from their coffee shop. At this point, not impressed!

We were suddenly guided to a door and went in to find ourselves in a small theatre and we were all given paper 3D glasses – hello! Some fun ensued as people took pictures of everyone else wearing their white glasses, before the feature started. If it was to be an expose on Capelhinos, we were disappointed. After a brief bit of CGI gimmickery to inform us superficially about plate tectonics, it became basically a 3D flyover of the Azorean islands. Some of the pictures and landscapes were quite stunning, but we had no idea which island they represented as there was no text or voice over – just music every struggling to reach a crescendo…

10 minute epic introduction to the Azores over, we exited back into the main hall and were quickly guided to another door which we all charged through like it was a fire exit and found ourselves in room with lots and lots of volcanic minerals and rocks – some from here and some from other islands. It was nice… clean… politely descriptive… but… lacking, even though the specimens were extremely good ones.

After that 5 minute detour we were all back milling in the main auditorium, wondering what to do next. A few of us were puzzling over the map of the building, because it seemed like there was an enormous part of this lighthouse we hadn’t explored, and yet could not see it from the auditorium – except it seemed to be behind a red door. A few of us ventured over to the door but we were gently discouraged from entering.

Just as some began to make their way out of the building, we were all suddenly rounded up and escorted through the red door! A long corridor greeted us with pictures of lighthouses of the Azorean islands. All a bit like Newfoundland except they were mainly white not red and white striped…

And then we rounded a corner and our guide set in motion this amazing movie where they showed all the various eruptions that happened to generate the new bit of land off Capelhinos! It was FASCINATING!! I loved it and wished he’d have set it going again so I could see it all again as I missed the beginning unaware there was something spectacular to see here!

Then we were herded along into other various rooms where other little movies were running and vast photographic displays of the volcanic evolution of each of the Azorean Islands. For me.. it was very interesting!

After that, we were eventually let out via a small shop with nothing too special to buy. But my impression of the place was vastly improved after going through the 3rd and last largest display area! There was some great stuff in there and I hope this centre takes off! They seemed to be thrilled they had had 1700 visitors since it opened last August… hope they get more this summer!

Once back outside, there was one more surprise for us.. We were led around the back of the lighthouse so we could take pictures form our vantage spot of the new volcanic landlmass, which we weren’t allowed to walk on – because it was a Site of Special Scientific Interet (SSSI), but then… suddenly, we were allowed to climb the stairs of the lighthouse!

A few of us sprinted up the tight (very tight) spiral staircase (our Expedition Leader beginning to grumble that we needed to head back to the ship…) and did a circuit outside in the fierce wind at the top. The top of the lighthouse was also gently vibrating in the wind…

We went back to Horta via a Flemish Garden which was one half native Azorean plants and one half European innovation. It was bit of a yawn but pretty because it was spring and flowering. We also briefly stopped on the other side of Horta on top of a hill and got some extremely windy photos of Horta town from the east. A windmill with no blades stood forlornly off to the side. The clouds did seem to be lifting at least!

Then the bus dropped us off back at the ship. We were told where the afternoons activities would start in case we wanted to walk from the ship not catch the little shuttle bus in.

I bailed on lunch again…Figured I’d find something in town. I had about 90 minutes to kill before I had to be at Pete’s Café, some famous whaling café which had a great scrimshaw museum.

Horta itself was not special! I wandered along the marina harbour, finding it a little surprising that over 1000 ships and yachts would all be vying to get into this place in summer! If there were oozles of tourist shops and restaurants, I did not see them. There were some – a surprisingly small handful of them, most of them closed, but far less than you’d expect in a town which just exploded in summer! Mind you, half of what was visible was also closed as people took an extended Easter break before the rush…

I walked along the main streets. It was much more ‘run down’ than Angra do Heroismo and I have no idea how the town could function in the summer crowds with cars roaring along the narrow cobbled streets and people squeezing by on the 1.5 person wide sidewalks adjacent to the tight roads…

I walked to the far eastern end where there was a clock tower, then began walking back. On the way, I stumbled across the ‘markets’ – which was a small enclosed square on which one side had some forlorn fruit and vege stands. I bought some strawberries but I don’t think I wowed them with my purchase…

Much to my delight though, just outside the market, I found a small bodega selling sandwiches, and I asked for a cheese sandwich and got a fresh one made for me – it was sooooo delicious! Simple and the bread was exquisitely fresh… Yum! Far better than any lunch that would have been provided on the ship….

I was 5 minutes late getting back to Pete’s café and I could only see of our Azorean guides, sitting in the café, which was decked out with nautical flags and all sorts of marine museum stuff. He saw me come in and jumped up and gave me a ticket to the scrimshaw museum. I couldn’t quite see the entrance which turned out to be a narrow wooden door at the back of the café (or bar since everyone seemed to be drinking the signature drink, gin…).

There was indeed a small scrimshaw museum up at the top of the stairs above the café, and the scrimshaw in there was pretty darn amazing. Definitely worth a visit. Not only the whale teeth had been carved on, but a fair bit of work had been done on other bones from the whales including a very impressive jesus-on-a-cross effort!

But there was only so much time I could spend there. A bit puzzled as to what everyone was doing, I asked the passengers what was going on. None of them seemed to really know either, so I wandered back outside and started to stroll over to the yacht marina which was absolutely covered in paintings from visiting yachts.

I began taking pictures of the images, just one or two initially then much more enthusiastically – I loved it all! Seemed like most images were less than 5 images with very very few older than 10 years – seemed to be the life span before the paint faded away! It helped that the clouds blew away and although still windy, it was now sunny!

I spent ages doing that, listening to radio chatter but not intervening until I had something to assist with. In the end, I had to wrap up my photography and sprint and hold the bus for our oldest passenger who was getting tired of walking. After getting her onboard, I went with the bus to the other side of the harbour where a small whaling museum was hidden behind a bit of land connecting Horta to a dormant/extinct volcano.

As at the lighthouse this morning, guides seemed to want to take us through things. Turned out it was a real whaling station once, so got to see the ramp and where they boiled and stewed things and extracted other things… Most of us ended up watching what we could of a 40 minute documentary of the whaling days back in the 1970s… Of the bald patch of hill up above Capelhinos where one fellow with very keen eyes watched for whale blows and the system to get everyone from Horta (in the speed boat) to Capelhinos in the curna’s (small quiet sailing boats towed out by speed boat) out to the whales…. Still not easy to watch the harpooning though! But we never got to see the very end because the bus came to take us back to the ship and everyone went for it as it was the last bus of the day.

By now, I had a stinker of a dehydration headache so was rather glad to get back to the ship. We were staying in port this evening, sailing early in the morning, and surprisingly, if one sat outside facing the right way, we had free wireless internet drifting over to us from the marina… Yay!

But first I had to get through the cruise BBQ, which I did as the headache now being medicated, was beginning to abate. We had a few guests on board for the BBQ – an Azorean singer by the name of Raquel and 2 Azorean guitarists who accompanied here. So she sang while everyone ate.

We also had an elderly gentleman by the name of John who was one of the last scrimshaw artists left in the Azores. He gave a very small talk – apparently there is only a very few bones left from the whaling days (whaling stopped in 1974 and apart from a brief attempt again in the 1980s has not been done since) and the world has gradually worked its way through the stockpile and he said in a couple of years time, there would be no more bone left! So… scrimshaw artists maybe part of a dying breed! Huh!!!

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