Travelblips

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.

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