4. Atlantic Islands of Azores and Tenerife v. Asia!

As I finish up my time on Pico Island, I can’t help but reflect and compare my holiday and time some far in the Azores compared to other places I have visited in and around Asia and also Tenerife.

There are similarities with Tenerife, perhaps understandably so since they are both volcanic islands of the Atlantic Ocean. There are very few beaches on Pico but what there is is black sand and all the rock is basalt. Pico is much greener with huge amounts more of vegetation and trees and greenery. I think the weather here is significantly less ‘year round’ decent climate than you’d get in the Canaries. They grow wine and also make cheese (although I’ve not seen even one cow, or goat, so I dread to think there the milk is coming from for that ….) rather than banana and tomatoes. The hydrangeas here (which grow everywhere) all flower blue so I think it’s quite acidic soil. I can’t comment on Tenerife or Asia’s PH balance of soil as I’m not sure I’ve ever seen their hydrangeas!

The sea is calm currently although I believe is rough for the majority of the year with crashing waves and spray. Indeed, the sea conditions here are only really calm enough for any significant diving for 3-4 months of the year and there is a lot more humidity. There are also a zillion little lizards that live here who sit on the rock to charge up for the day but scuttle away the instant you get close or pass by or try to take a photo of! The other wildlife, aside from the talking birds, consists of other sea bits and the ubiquitous sparrow. My Dad is exactly right too that the language, when written, looks very similar to Spanish, so I can follow the basic signs and labels and menus but when you hear it spoken, it sounds totally different. I kept thinking there were a surprising amount of Russians or Eastern Europeans about until my dad pointed out that is it how Portuguese sounds!

When I’m in Asia, people often ask me if I’m Spanish. Weirdly, a similar thing seems to happen here as I keep being given the Portuguese menus or signs / instructions. As I’m busily using the translate app on my phone to work out what to have for dinner and then start speaking to the waitress, they apologise profusely and rush off to get an English menu / instruction. I thought it was a mistake the first time but it’s now happened three times since, which is weird! I seem quite often get greeted with the Spanish ‘Hola!’ too (which is not the Portuguese greeting. The greeting they use here is technically ‘bom dia’ which means ‘good day’, however, they tend to just shorten it to a grunt that sounds roughly similar to ‘dia’. Not unlike the locals in Tenerife). In terms of the locals, in general, those in Asia are far kinder and friendlier and more likely to smile and say hello and talk to you. That is not the case here.

There are also a lot of Americans here, which I guess makes sense when you realise how close it is. I haven’t engaged much in conversation with any (that’s not a deliberate act!) although the ones I’ve encountered seem quite nice and quiet and well behaved, with the exception of a slightly irritating couple of women who were at my hotel pool one day, both on their technology. One conducted a phone call that lasted WELL OVER AN HOUR which seemed to just be a social catch up and was mostly fairly quiet but did sometimes involve parading around the pool area, walking up and down the shallow end and generally sharing her side of the call far more than was necessary. The other woman was on a laptop, mostly quite except for when she’d watch the odd, quite short, video clip or listen to something which then necessitated her to lean away from her friend conducting the phone call (don’t want to disturb, of course’), over the side of the sunbed towards me and seemingly record a message to send back. I politely ignored initially, then employed my best annoyed teacher look and stare as it continued and was just considering going to ‘politely’ ask the phone call lady how much longer she’d be on the phone in the communal area for us all to listen to when she, thankfully, finally hung up. They weren’t there again, which is probably just as well!

In terms of the water - it is colder and so the marine life is very different and colours much more muted. Although they still have their fair share of different, but excellent, spectacular things to see- the mobula rays have been a highlight so far. Here, when diving, you have to set up and carry all of your own gear to and from the boat and pay many times more than it costs in Asia. I miss the service, care and price of Asia! In general, it’s far more expensive here - high European prices I’d say and no cheap / budget options at all really. The food is all either steak or sea food but it is absolutely delicious. Things I much prefer about the Azores are the far more comfortable temperatures (hot but not so hot you have to run from one bit of shade to the next while worrying about instant onset heatstroke!), you can wear shorts and vest tops without it being a modesty issue at all, toilet paper is provided and used by all here and, much more conveniently, you can drink the tap water so lugging gallons of water from the shop is not needed! Their approach to zebra crossings is still pretty hit and miss and it should absolutely not be expected that anyone will stop although interestingly, in Porta Delgado on the big island, they did all stop to let people cross both at zebra crossings and at raised, tiled crossing ‘strips’ across the roads. In Pico, they’re significantly less likely to stop, even if you’re clearly struggling with kilos upon kilos of dive gear and sweltering in a mega wetsuit in the sun while waiting at a zebra crossing.

Unlike in Asia, you don’t see any monks, just catholics in disguise as kind, caring and decent people so there is no giving way to monks. You do, however, had to give up your seat here for women with a box up their dress or people who have a bad back because their walking stick is far too short!

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I spent my last couple of days drying out dive gear, reading my book and enjoying some final time in restaurants, by the harbour sampling local wine and by the pool and sea pools - and I got the best outside for breakfast with the mountain view! I also discovered that I could walk round a coastal path from my hotel to the town, rather than down the road. It’s good I discovered that on my last day! Good for walking on but I couldn’t have taken my horse drawn carriage down there, even if I’d wanted to! I tend not to spend loads of time in the direct sunshine as there are ample umbrellas and shades about but I think despite the suncream, just walking around and swimming means I’ve caught the sun a fair bit. When the nice taxi man returned at the end of my week to collect me, he gestured to my face and said ‘bronzed’ and then went as far as flipping down the passenger seat mirror and making me look at my own face in the mirror. I’ve elected to interpret that as a compliment on my excellent bronzed-goddess type suntan and absolutely not to do with my quite red, slightly peely nose!

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My first flight hop back to Porta Delgado went well. They loaded us all onto the tiny propellor plane, sat us in the seats that are just a little too small so when you end up next to a man who needs to spread, he’ll take the entire arm rest and into my seat and when I shift and press against him to show how much of my space he’s encroaching into, he doesn’t seem to mind and just stays there, which then becomes a little odd so I rearranged and hung over the other arm into the aisle. Fortunately, it was only a 40 minute flight! My overnight stop turned out to be in a room in an apartment, which judging by the signage and set up, contains three bedrooms, a bathroom and kitchen (with a kettle, excellent news!). I’m pretty sure all 3 rooms are rented reparation. It’s an interestingly furnished and decorated place, not unlike traveling back in time to the 60’s decor of lace doilies on each surface, highly patterned soft furnishing, dark, cheap wood furniture, sinister family portrait photos on the wall and, of course, Jesus in a jar! I wasn’t entirely sure if I’d gone to stay in the apartment of a nice ‘traditional’ Portuguese lady … or a horror film. Fortunately, the night passed uneventfully and I was back to airport for my hop to the next island.

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Another smooth transfer to the airport and check in, although what I thought an anolmoly at the last airport seems to be more of a common occurrence … the women here seem to opt for mega shiny, super-dressy tight pink dresses as their travel outfit of choice. I keep seeing it. It’s odd. I was also slightly horrified to discover when we tripped off across the tarmac to get on our plane, that it was actually a toy plane we were flying on. I generally like to be near the front of a plane and was happy to be in row 5. This time, that was in the middle as there were a total of 9 rows on the plane. 9 rows of 4. 36 and the plane was full. Madness. Nonetheless, our 20 minute flight (fly steeply and noisily upwards for 9 minutes, 2 minutes of seatbelt sign turned off, then steep descend back down) was fine.

It became a little more problematic once I arrived at my hotel at 1pm to find a sign up saying the front desk was unoccupied until 3pm but to have received a message from them telling me that my originally booked room was no longer available. And also, the swimming pool is ‘out of order’ (because they’ve clearly not performed any care or maintenance for some time and it has turned into an actual pond complete with a huge amount of algae and clumps of weed in it). To cut what could have been a much longer, sweary, stressy and fairly tearful rant a little shorter, the upshot is that I have relocated and booked an alternative hotel. Unfortunately, it is 5 miles outside of town (since I had booked the only hotel that is in town!). In the end, and after much googling and several phone calls, I eventually managed to find a place which had a car to rent for the next 5 days so booked that too. Getting back to the airport to pick up the car meant dragging my mega wheelie bag and giant handluggage rucksack up a cobbled street approximately the size of Buster Mountain to get to the taxi rank - it was a ‘lost in translation’ error too far when I tried to ring and get one to come and collect me. Once at the airport, fortunately, the car hire was ok. I’ve paid roughly what I think it would cost to buy the car outright to hire it for my stay here but since taxis are such an issue and quite rare on this island, it seems the best option! On another day, I shall return to my original hotel and do battle with them as they are currently refusing to refund me (they’ve now found me a room again but by that time, I’d paid non-refundable amounts for car and now hotel and already moved and this hotel is much nicer really so it works out ok - just expensive!). I dread to think how much the various phone calls and extra charges will come to…. However, the pool here looks outs over the fields, the view out my dual aspect corner room is out across the fields to and remote-ness of the island. I’ve got my kettle and a fridge in the room, located a shop in my little car and stocked up, and got a day’s dive trip to some islands booked for the morning.