Tea plantations in Europe

After 4 fantastic nights in Furnas spa hotel I had to leave. I drove to Gorreana tea plantations which are the only tea plantations “in Europe”. I saw in TripAdvisor that the place is a bit weird. When I say weird I mean you just reach the place and walk in and self-guide yourself. There's no entrance fee or anything, you jut walk inside the factory, see the old machines (they were not working when I was there) and then you can walk around the plantations, which are quite close to the ocean. It was quite different from what I saw in Sri Lanka. Of course here it was much smaller, and also the bushes were a bit shorter.

When the "tour was over" I went back inside to a small tasting room. When I did my research before, everyone were saying that you can drink as much as you want, etc. – whatever … I picked the one I liked the most and went to pay at the register. Next to it was a small basket of … mini-pineapples ! Really mini, that I could hold it in my hand !

From there I went to Ribeira Grande which is a big city on the northern shore. On my way there I stopped for a nice lookout at the ocean and by lunch I was already in Ponta Delgada because there was some religious ceremony going on in the afternoon.

Santo Cristo festival

Apparently they have this kind of tradition, only in this city, that they move a big statue of 'Santo Cristo' every year on the fifth weekend after Easter. So streets are getting closed and decorated, people bring chairs from home to see this parade and so on. So I waited for almost 2 hours to see this thing moving around. From what I understood, after midnight they moved it again to a bigger church so people would have room to pray. It's like a big parade with many delegations – policemen, firefighters, scouts, and so on, and then there are the religious people who carry the big statue around. It looks heavy!

Trying Lagoa do Fogo one last time

The next day I woke up and just for the sake of it decided to check the status of Lagoa do Fogo. (Very) surprisingly I could see the lake in the webcam! Yeah, there's a site with webcams that are spread across the island so you can check the visibility and temperature before you go. So clever! I had a quick breakfast, which was lousy anyway and got there before clouds come again. Finally I saw "him"! Indeed it is a nice lake. I moved between the 4-5 different viewpoints to get all the angles. In one of them I saw something that looked like the beginning of a trail.

I started going (without my backpack) and after a while found myself… At the lake! It went all they way down, and was pretty nice. So I even reached one of its 'beaches' and then came all the way up to drink some water 🙂 . The first 2 pictures here are from the same spot – one visibility, and the other is from 2 days earlier where I could only see clouds.

There's a small park close to the lake which is called Caldeira Vera. The flora is very nice, but the site is mainly for the thermal pool and a small waterfall. Is located about 100-200 meters below the viewing points and the sky here was blue! So I checked the website again, maybe to see it now in better light/colors, but I got a really foggy picture, like the other day 🙁 .

It's unbelievable, because you're 5 minutes away and yet the sky is so different. Eventually I thought that I had nothing to lose as this is my last day and I didn't have any other plans, so I'd just go there and see if the clouds disappear. In fact I did get some better pictures, and I was quite trigger happy, I think I took ~100 pictures.

I drove back to Ponta Delgada only to find out that the festivals around "Cristo" weren't over. Streets were still closed and way more colorful. I started walking in the street to see where the decoration begins and I think I covered half a city… Along the way I could see decorated balconies, people coming out in their best outfits – they really put effort into it!

At night, everything looks different because of the "Xmas" lights decorations and all the little light bulbs. Then I started thinking about it – where do they store the statue all year long?!

Anyway, this was my last night in San Miguel, I didn't say "the Azores" on purpose since I might come to visit a different island some day…