Wanderung 34

We docked at the main city on San Miguel, Ponta Delgada, and joined a bus tour of the western end of the island to see some volcanic calderas with lakes inside, somewhat like Crater Lake National Park in the USA. Crater Lake is quite large, and I expected the lakes on San Miguel to be a lot smaller but was still curious to see them.

The ride out to that end of the island took us past the airport on the western edge of Ponta Delgado and the scenery quickly shifted to a very bucolic, pastoral countryside. Mostly we saw Holstein cows for the extensive dairy and cheese industry on San Miguel, but there were also farms with some beef cattle and I spotted one field with some sheep. The stone fences separating the framers' fields were visible, whereas on Faial those fences had been so overgrown with greenery that we almost never saw the stones underneath. As it turns out, Faial gets at least 30-40% more rain per year than San Miguel, and as a result it felt more lush and green to us.

Our tour bus climbed up the rim of the caldera surrounding several of the lakes and we paused at the ruins of an old luxury hotel right at the crest. The viewpoint was being rebuilt, so we had to make do with taking pictures from behind that construction zone, but the lakes below were really fantastic.

Directly below us, the floor of the caldera was mostly filled with a smaller greenish lake separated from a larger bluish lake by a man-made bridge and causeway. The hues were not as vivid and saturated as the deep, indigo blue that you see at Crater Lake in the USA, but the two different colors make the view intriguing.

Our bus then circled the rim road for a bit before dropping down a series of switchbacks to the bottom of the caldera. We finally drove across that bridge and causeway we had seen from above, over to the edge of the larger lake, where a town and small church were located.

The church was fortunately open for viewing, because it was small but quite pretty. I enjoyed the nicely-done wooden pews lining either side of the nave, and the altar area was very traditional Roman Catholic, with a crucifix in the center.There also was a baptismal font in a niche lined with blue and white tiles.

I also tried to walk the short distance to the lake shoreline, but ran out of time as we only had 30 minutes in the town (that's the disadvantage of a bus tour). I did, however, get a nice shot of a small, modest cottage with an old stone fence leading up the rutted driveway to the house. The old stone fence was just completely covered with some kind of wild vine that was flowering, and the total effect of the old stone wall covered with a carpet of small, delicate, multi-colored flower blossoms was very artistic. I also found the ruins of an old stone house with plants just starting to take over and cover the walls. Meanwhile, Monika stayed in town and got a great shot of a most beautiful "bird of paradise" flower.

We re-boarded the bus to drive back out of the caldera, and along the way stopped at a third lake kind of back in one corner of the caldera. Here the azaleas alongside the viewpoint were in full bloom, and the bumblebees were busy having a morning snack! So we took some quick pics before continuing back to Ponta Delgada using a highway along the northern coastline for the return trip.

Back in the city, we stopped for a wine and cheese tasting snack in the fancy hotel across the street from the maritime terminal. Both the wines and cheeses were from different islands in the Azores, and were quite good. The bus finally dropped us off at the terminal, and we re-boarded the Zuiderdam for a late lunch before heading out again.

For our short afternoon foray into the city, we first walked along the seaside promenade that runs along the marinas located on both sides of the main cruise-ship terminal area. The promenade was very prettily done, with some oddball sculptures and so forth. We branched off the promenade to visit a small plaza with the old but ornate triple archway that is a kind of the iconic signature structure for Ponta Delgada. The local legend goes that whoever walks through the archway will ultimately come back to Ponta Delgada. So of course we took a picture of Linda and Jerry walking through it! From there we worked our way back away from the harbor and uphill a bit to a square where the main church was located.

The church was closed, but the cafes and tourist shops around the square were mostly open despite it being the official holiday of May 1, so we sat down to use some free Wifi to check our email and call folks back at home. Monika and I finally visited one of the tourist shops and I found another leather folding coin purse for just over 10 Euro, so I was very happy as I had neglected to bring such a coin purse along and coins are large in Europe. Yay!

We circled around the old town area around the church and stopped for drinks of coffee, tea, and beer at a nearby cafe before returning to the maritime terminal. There we once again paused for drinks and used the free Wifi connections before we all trouped back onboard the Zuiderdam. We rested on our balcony while we watched the aquatic antics at a local swimming area located right there in the harbor. When our ship started to sail off, we watched the city slowly disappear.

As tired as we were, we decided to have a low-key dinner in the Lido deck buffet, and then listen to the two singer-pianists in the Billboard bar for a set of songs from the 1960s. After that, the two of us retired for the night although Linda and Jerry stayed down there for a second performance that was going to feature songs from the 1970s. Being younger does have advantages when it comes to endurance, it seems!