Ponta Delgada

 

Borealis Tuesday 9th May 2023

The Captain got it wrong. His fine weather prediction for the Azores was not to be. We slid into a rain soaked Ponta Delgada at 8am. That did not put us in too good a mood. The view from the breakfast room onto the main area of the city is actually quite pleasing because, while the day remained overcast, the dark menacing clouds were only over the hills. We had our hurried breakfast and turned up at the theatre to report for our morning excursion only to find that it had already left the ship. We hurried down to the gangplank and the port terminal  and passed on to the coach. There were no passport controls of any kind. 

The coach drove out of the town of Ponta Delgado, the maintown of the island of Sao Miguel, which in turn is the largest of the 9 islands of the Azores archipelago. On the map the island has a long sausage shape with our port being on the south western corner of the island. The town was not large with probably no more than 100,000 inhabitants. The town had only one high rise residence and its highest buildings were the church towers and the town hall bell tower. It was clean with limited traffic and good quality roads. Everything looked neat and in place, the road signs and road markings looked new, and there was not a drop of litter in sight.

Of course this was really Europe now. Azores had always been Portuguese. When the Portuguese first discovered the island in 1432 as a result of Prince Henry the Navigator's prodding of the possible routes to India, nobody was living here. It is possible that there had been Phoenician and Viking landings on these islands, because the explorer who discovered it, Cabral, had maps showing the outlines of some of the islands. It was first settled by landless Portuguese peasants seeking to eke out a living in a new virgin territory, but it was organized by a group of Flemish nobles imported here at the behest of Henry's sister, the Duchess of Burgundy, when their land was overrun in the Hundred Years War. The main product was initially wheat, but then it became a useful entrepot for Spanish galleons trading some of their treasures for Azorian supplies of provisions and fresh water. Its prosperity suffered under Spanish occupation but in the eighteenth and nineteenth century it became dependent on the production of oranges, especially for British and Amercan armed forces. Following a catastophic collapse of orange production caused by a disease the Azores needed to diversify and became reliant on producing and exporting whale fat, pineapple, tea, sugar beet, tobacco and dairy products. The last of these, the production of beef, milk, butter and cheese remains a primary export of these islands to this day. The countryside is scattered with meadows full of Friesian cows with their traditional black and white patches. 

As we left the town we began to drive in the direction of the higher hills we could see from the port.  Despite the altitude the hills were covered with the deepest lushiest green vegetation. But as we looked further up we could see the higher ground was still enveloped in a thick white cloud, which remained as dense when close at hand as it did from a distance. Our first stop was supposed to be the Lake of Fire but we were beginning to have our doubts about being able to see it, though we left the matter unsaid initially. Of course I did express my concern about this quietly to Albina. She was not pleased and started complaing about why we were travelling in that direction if we were not going to be able to see it.

In the end, Anna, our tour guide, voiced her concern about this in public. Apparantly these heavy mists normally appeared in June and were occasioned by the mistiming of the increase in summer warmth between the land and the sea. This is because the sea warms more quickly. In the past these mists were called the "St John's fog" and were the most common cause of fatal shipwrecks at this time of the year. However, with the increasing quirkiness of the climate here, as well as everywhere else, the mists have been coming earlier. Anna explained over the bus' sound system that we were now approaching the lake she wanted to show us, but there was a danger we might not see it. She was praying hard, she said, for the cloud to disperse, as this was supposed to be "the highlight of the tour". On hearing about this being the highlight, the British tourists in the bus burst out laughing. It was a welcome British recognition of the fact that in Britain the weather always has the last laugh. Albina angrily vented her frustration to me but I just shrugged. We actually stopped at the viewing point and Anna asked if anyone wanted to get out. But we all looked down on the milky obstruction below us and stayed in the coach. Anna consoled us by walking the length of the bus and showing us pictures of the lake in its pristine form. Of course it was nobody's fault, but it would have been wonderful to see the lake resting on the floor of the crater, both as a scientific wonder and as a picture of natural harmony of colours. It is also a warning. The particular crater had erupted in 1563, as recorded by the Portuguese, and hence the name Lake of Fire. What erupted once, can erupt again. The whole archipelago is potentially under threat as it sits on the dividing line between three tectonic plates, African, American and European. The mist prevented us from dwelling on the potential danger. Yet, withn two minutes of us leaving the site, we were looking down on a beautiful valley without even a smidgeon of mist in sight.

We drove lower into the valley, now lush with Japanese cedars and a forest of ginger and heavy fern. The humidity increased as we got out of the coach at a place called Caldera de Velha, which translates as Old Hot Springs. We walked down a path through the lush forest until, certainly to my surprise, we passd a series of cubicles for chamging clothes, from which emerged a young lady in a bikini. She skipped past us a few yards further down and to our left we came onto a natural hot spring with some ten people bathing in it. A few steps further and there was a second pool full of more locals, which included a couple of young children. Anna led us past the pools up into another larger pool. "This one is not just warm, it is hot," said Anna. These pools were sitting on top of hot geysers caused by the hot water heated from the magma bubbling not so far beneath. We walked to a further pool, where the sides were yellow from contact with the iron. Then things went a little awry. Our group seemed to have got split up. Anna disappeared somewhere, as did the Fred Olsen rep, Anya, one of the Borealis Theatre Company dancers. We wandered around looking where other members of the group were going, wondering where to go and who to follow. Albina and I reached the spot where the coach had left us. Some of our group were there too, looking lost. I remembered our guide had said something about the bus picking us up lower down. I found a steep staircase leading further down some 100 or so deep steps. At the bottom of the stairs was our coach and our driver waiting for us. I began climbing the steps again to retrieve Albina and the others. When I got to the top, exhausted, I found that Anna had just turned up and seemed unaware that she had lost some of us on the way. We all went down the stairs again and then waited in the coach for the remaining stragglers that Anya had rounded up. And then we were off. Cheekily, I asked Anya in the coach, "Which was more difficult? Herding passengers or learning the choreography?" She gave a grin and pretended to give the matter some thought. "Depends on what kind of passengers I get," she finally answered.

We moved on to another beauty spot on the northern coast of the island. Suddenly, the mist was back. This time we got out of the bus and walked to the look out point. We went through a natural archway formed by two Japanese cedars. These trees are everywhere. We got to the platform edge. Again, just milk. Yet there was also historical interest in the site. It was the spot where liberal troops backing King Pedro landed to begin the reconquest of the island in 1832 in their struggle with the absolutists. I made some intelligent comment about that struggle with Anna, and one of the other passengers, whom I did not know, personally commented on the fact that she remembered my talk. Then one of the other passengers said "Oh yes, I remember. You said the balloon was not  part of the novel." "That's true," I agreed. "I'm amazed you people still remember. My talk was a month ago." "Shows we were listening," the second lady laughed. I was impressed. These people were still talking about my lecture, when they have, on average, listened to some 120 lectures since the start of the cruise. I obviously supplied a need at the time.

Last stop was the tea factory. Although the economy was now moving further into fields like tourism and the dairy industry, tea, which had been adopted as one of the prime industries of the Azores in the XIXth century, still has several factory farms in the country. Tea can be grown in this country in the months between April and December. We came to one such farm called Cha Gorreana, which is still operating with machinery from the last two centuries and still housed in the same old building. Pitched against the deafening noise of the machinery, Anna tried to overcome that obstacle as she struggled to give us a lecture on how the orange pekoe from inside the tea plant was placed into rollers, then oxidized, then dried and finally separated and packed into sacks. The factory produced both green tea and three varieties of black tea. The main difference between the two is the initial steaming process of the green tea.  

We were invited to the tasting area which combined as a shop for visitors. We were able to drink both the green and the black variety along with a complementary pineapple cake. The surrounding slopes were covered with neat measured green bushes of tea through which you could walk in very narrow paths that brushed against your clothes on either side. There were also other plants around the factory, such as the pretty blue flower of the Agapanthus plant which flowers at the time of the year in the Azores, along with pink azaleas. Albina was also drawn to the factory cat lazing outside. It had the traditional black and white colours associated with the country's cows.  As we drew away from the farm Anna suddenly announced. "Oh, I forgot one detail. Because of its enzymes, tea can also be a good substitute to viagra. If you have not bought any tea, shall I stop the coach so you can go back and buy more tea?" Of course that raised a laugh in the coach. It's probably her standard joke at this section of the tour, especially when she has a group of older passengers. 

On our way back to Ponte Delgada we passed one of the island's geothermal power plants which generates a quarter of the island's electricity needs. The country is also more and more dependent on tourism and is looking for further investment in that field while wishing to preserve the island's culture and traditions. Apart from the attractiveness of the climate and the rolling green fields and forested mountains of the country, there is also the attraction of sperm whales and other riches of marine life in the surrounding seas. Whaling as an industry was dropped in the last century.

On returning to the town the coach stopped at the square beside the old XVIIth century fortress.  Anna  asked if anybody wanted to get out here to visit the town individually. Some 10 of us got out. The rest, including Albina, were driven back to the ship which was nearby. I visited the fortress, built to withstand pirates and the French navy attacks. It was an imposing sight, although the ramparts were not very high, they still dominated the western part of the town and also the harbour area. Inside the rooms and internal passages looked dark and dank, like something from the middle ages. Yet there were fine exhibits in neat glass cages of uniforms and firearms throughout the centuries, from the sixteenth upto and including the twentieth century, with well documented exhibits of the history of the fortress. 

Emerging from there I crossed over to the Convent of Hope chapel and church. The full name was Santuario de Nosso Senhor Santo Cristo das Milagres attached to the Convento de Las Esperanza. The interior of the church was beautiful with a barrel vaulted ceiling beautifully adorned with blue and gold panels, while the walls were lined with large blue and white ceramic panels depicting the life of a local saint. There was also a richly adorned balcony protruding from one of the walls, which may or may not have been a pulpit. The other end of the nave ended in a heavy duty grating behind which was a further chapel dominated by a bright gold portrait of the Christ surrounded with a silver framed altarpiece with numerous candles arranged beaneath it. A small number of parishioners were praying on our side of the grating and it was obviously a place of veneration. There were candles ("cirios") on sale at the entrance, but these were not the sort of mini candles supplied in a British church. Each of these was was a think wax tube at least 3 metres long. These people take their veneration seriously, especially as they associated the church with miracles. The front of the church was covered with some scaffolding and a large banner proclaiming a coming church festival to be celebrated next weekend.

I walked further into town along a narrow pedestrianized street roughly parallel to the harbour. The overwhelming colour of the largely two storey buildings was white. Some had balconies jutting out onto the street, but most just had shuttered windows on the first floor. The streets were largely quiet and clean, and pictureque enough to be a tourist attraction in their own right. I reached the historic town hall with a double staircase emerging in the middle. At the back of it was a bell tower which I foolishly chose to climb to the top. There must have been more than a hundred steep steps inside the tower, which was dark and without any hand rail for support. Large gaps would appear between the vertical and horizontal stones of each step, through which you could see the ground way beneath. There was a wonderful view of the town from the top, but coming down you felt as if each step had to be leaped, rather than just stepped down, to avoid the yawning gaps. The Bell tower must have been in the same state of decaying repair that it was when it was first constructed some 350 years ago. I needed to recover and eat a burger at one of the nearby cafes adjoing the civic centre. A group of Azorian school children had just been rehearsing for a concert while standing on a platform facing the town hall. Behind the platform was a long fountain and a statue of the patron saint of the island, St Michael the Archangel.  To the left of the civic centre were the 18th century city gates, consisting of three ornate arches, which stood between the town and harbour. In front of them was the statue of the seafarer Cabral who first discovered Sao Miguel Island in 1432. Behind the gates was another prominent baroque church called St Sebastian with a white square tower attached, which was from a later period, and which had been visible above the rooftops of the town from the ship when we came in. 

While walking the streets of Ponta Delgada I kept running into passengers and crew from the vessel. All of them said the same thing, They agreed that Ponta Delgada was a pretty town, with little traffic and noise, nice shops and cafes, and free of litter and dirt. Most would happily revisit the place.

We sailed at 6pm. We seemed to be departing from the island for a long time as it was still close and vsible for the next hour and a half. I assume that we were simply circumnavigating the island, so as to be able to proceed through the Atlantic ftom the island's northern coast. Yet the island looked magical as we sailed on because it as enveloped by clouds at two levels forming distinct strata of cloud at the top and the middle of the mountains. It was quite eerie, even romantic. What added to the magic and the romance was a pod of dolphins playing around the ship as we slipped further and further away from the island.

I spent most of the evening watching films on out TV and also a show from the Neptune Theatre with a rather earthy ventriloquist called Jimmy Tanley. I cam dwnstairs to the Morning Light Lounge for another quiz, which was particularly tricky. We were disappointed with our 8 points until we realized that the winner only received 9. I took back to the cabin my Pere Ventura bottle of champagne which we had won on our third victory a couple of days back. Albina was very please until she realized tht Fred Olsen's prize bottles given away as every day prizes were dated no later than 20th December 2022.