Travelblips

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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