Whale watching! I re-watched both the Planet Earth and Blue Planet documentaries before the trip, and in each David Attenborough mentions whales heading for the Azores. It’s supposed to be some of the best whale watching available, and our tour leader said they’d seen the first blue whale of the season the week before. The idea is that the tour company posts a spotter on Monte Brasil with a telescope and a radio. The spotter can see whales spouting up to 15 miles out and can radio the location of the whales down to the tour boat.
I’m on a boat! It was small inflatable raft that started out on our three-hour tour. (Yes, a three-hour tour.) I’m going to spoil the ending so you won’t have to wait in suspense: there were no whales. As the weather started getting rough and the tiny ship was tossed, the whale spotters weren’t able to see whales spouting because of the choppy sea. But we could definitely feel the ship tossing. It was fun for the first couple hours, like a roller coaster where you’re launched into the air followed by a stomach-flipping drop back down to earth. (I see why the boat’s benches were padded.) But by hour three we were exhausted from holding on for dear life, wishing they’d turn down the wind and turn up the sun, and drenched, drenched from the ocean fire-hosing us when the boat’s nose dipped into the waves. (They handed out green ponchos to protect our clothes in case of saltwater spray, but I doubt the ponchos were designed with these conditions in mind.) It was unimaginably, bone-chillingly cold (if you go, double the amount of warm clothes you were planning to wear) marinating in saltwater in a high-wind, low-sun situation. It was colder than choir tour in Bruges senior year of high school, or that time in Salt Lake City when my parents and I toured Temple Square one night during Christmas break. Even if we had seen whales, we would have not been able to operate our fingers well enough to get our cameras out of our jackets.
But, having said all that, I think it was an unusually bad day. Even though it was miserable, especially considering there were no whales, I was tempted to try it again on the second island. If the sun was out it would have been a completely different experience, and I really wanted to see a whale. And speaking of not giving up, back to the pirates I mentioned in the last post! This is the cliff side of Monte Brasil, the part that the cannons at the fort can’t reach. So if you are a highly motivated pirate, that low spot on the left where the two ridges meet and dip down into the water is where pirates got onto the island while avoiding the fort. (It’s still pretty high, though, and looked like it would involve a good bit of cliff scaling.)
Clouds cover the top of Serra de Santa Bárbara, the highest point on Terceira at 3,350 feet. Driving to the top to look at the view was on my to-do list, but I ended up skipping it both because of time and because it was so often hidden by the clouds.
This is my rental car! It’s an Opel Corsa. Most of the cars in the Azores have manual transmission, so this was one area of the trip where I splurged to get an automatic. It wasn’t an automatic so much as a manual that shifted for you. So while you were trying to floor it the car would suddenly stop accelerating to change gears, which was a bit terrifying for the first few days until I got used to it. But I got so used to it that when I drove the Mustang yesterday, I tried to put it in drive by tapping the stick twice to the left like in the Corsa. Notice the convenient sticker on the left side of the hatchback window. It’s the logo of the rental company, and all the companies do it. It’s a handy, “I’m a tourist,” warning. I remember driving in Spain was a bit of a challenge, and the Azores felt similar. I had Plans A, B, C, and D for navigating: A) Google maps navigation on my phone, B) the rental car deal came with a free GPS, C) look up the route ahead of time and memorize the turns and the street names, and D) just start driving in the general direction and hope for the best. Well, Plans A through C failed. Like I mentioned in my first post, my phone isn’t unlocked so I wasn’t able to get a Portuguese SIM card, and I didn’t have data away from a Wi-Fi connection for Google maps navigation. Then the first island’s rental car company refused to honor the free GPS deal and the second island’s company gave me a GPS that could map Portugal but not the Azores. Then when I’d resigned myself to memorizing street names and turn directions, I realized that there are no street names. I looked at a map for the trip to the volcano and thought, “I just take the EN3-1A to the EN5-2A, those look like major freeway-type roads, I’m sure I’ll see them.” And then when the EN5-2A looked just like Frog Hollow Road in Walla Walla, of course I blew past it. So I got lost. A lot. But I got some good photos as a result!
Azorean cows.
The Azorean cows are fenced in with rock walls that grow their own flowers.
I’m in a volcano!
The tunnel from the gift shop to the cave.
Looking up.
The mouth of the lava tube is covered in ferns.
The main part of the cave.
Furnas do Enxofre is near the volcano and popular because of the steam vents.
Steam venting into the air.
The mouth of a steam vent.
Dinner at Birou Bar.
Some of the reviews I read about their vegan food complained that it was vegetables in brown sauce and that’s it. Well, that sounded delicious, so I was excited that they had it.
Leaving the marina for whale watching and dolphins! We didn’t see whales, but once we found the dolphins they swam beside our boat until we went back to the marina. (You can see how hard the boat drops by the camera shake at the end of the video.)