Ponta Delgada - The Azores

After 16 days at sea, our longest crossing yet, we were happily anticipating a trip to the grocery store. What we didn’t expect was breathtaking landscapes, a two to one cow-human ratio and a legacy left behind by the Sorlandet crew of 1986.

Incidentally, the Azores is an archipelago of volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic. Technically, one might say that they are the tallest mountain range on the planet, be it mostly underwater. Personally, I wasn’t expecting much from Ponta Delgada. The year was winding down and we thought we had already seen the most interesting things, and had the most amazing adventures … apparently not!

On our port program, we rode a bus along a seaside highway that wound in and out of the grassy hillside. We passed many vertical farms, lots of greenery and cows … so many cows! Our guide took us to a hot springs a couple hours from the city. It smelled awful and sulphuric. We saw boiling mud and steam in the middle of a mossy, forested area.

One neat thing about the hot springs was the cooking holes. During the summer, people from all over Ponta Delgada would come to the springs with a pot full of raw vegetables and meat (no water) around 6:00 am. They would then bury their pots in the cooking holes. Later in the evening, they would return to the holes and dig up their dinner. Our guide told us that food tastes a hundred times better being cooked this way, because without the use of water, and the slow speed of the cooking, the flavours are so much stronger and vibrant.

After visiting the cooking holes, we stopped by an AMAZING botanical garden with a hot spring swimming pool. It was so beautiful and relaxing. Our afternoon was well spent wading in the warm murky water in the garden.

After our long day of touring, we had worked up quite an appetite and gathered a group together to have a barbeque. We learned on the tour that there were fire pits all over the island with free firewood available for anyone to use. When we asked our guide about it and he said that it was supposed to rain and also we didn’t have a light for when it got dark … we were quite disappointed until he came up with a solution.

He told us to buy everything we needed for a barbeque and then he would take us to a special spot. We bought all our stuff at the grocery store – hot dogs, chips, chocolate, bananas, cookies, bread and cheese. Our guide from the afternoon was waiting for us and he drove us to … his HOUSE! His wife wasn’t too happy about it, but we had lots of fun.

The next day, a group of local Sea Scouts roughly around our age, came for a tour of the ship. Then, they took us all to this old sailor’s smoking bar and café. It was the NEATEST place! The walls and ceiling was covered in posters, plaques, life rings, t-shirts and other memorabilia from tall ships all over the world.

We searched the place and found a smoky old Sorlandet shirt that said “Atlantic Crossing 1986”. It was so cool, sitting in that bar, knowing that a Sorlandet crew before us had done the same thing, and docked in the same port. We went back to the ship and returned the next day with a brand new Sorlandet poster. We all signed it and wrote “Atlantic Crossing 2012”. The owner promised he would find some wall space and hang it up! If you are ever in Ponta Delgada, ask anyone and they’ll tell you where the old sailor’s bar is. Our mark will be there.

ll in all, the Azores was quite a pleasant surprise! However, despite the elation of a successful and fun port, we are all saddened by the prospect of our final sail that will pass by far too quickly.