ACE ON EARTH
to ride the bow wave of the boat. our expert young skipper, Joao Quadresma, negotiates the action with zippy aplomb, directed by whale-watching on clifftop towers called vigias.
ALL the while, the majestic peak of Pico rises through the cloud cover that runs around it like a fur collar. Not that the islands’ delights end with its marine animals. the Azores’ fertile soil grows the best vegetables I’ve ever tasted, and the people cultivate their own tea, bananas, and grape vines.
In a little home-town restaurant on Pico I have the single most sensational fish I have ever eaten — hoicked on long-lines, direct from the deep, dark Atlantic.
so fearfully deep and dark that even though I am addicted to swimming in the sea every day, I feel a frisson of fear as I descend a wonky steel ladder directly into the raging depths.
But I am glad when I do — my body joyously buoyed up by bouncing, rocking waves. A million times better than any theme park.
the quiet island of Pico is a blissful retreat. our hotel, the Aldei da Fonte, is a quirky collection of neat villas built of volcanic stone. sequestered in its tree-shade perch on top of the sea cliffs, it’s surrounded by lush gardens and active wildlife: from the blackbirds and finches of daytime, to the bats that zip around your head at night.
More eerie is the strange squawk of Cory’s shearwaters as they come into land at dusk. they sound like demonic Donald Ducks; sailors used to say they were the voices of their drowned comrades. After your second sundowner cocktail, you might even believe it.
the islands are subtle. their people are taciturn, yet friendly; stalwart inhabitants used to the precarious life of an oceanic archipelago. Perhaps that’s what I like about the Azores.
It is a microcosm of our own island: defiant and independent, yet irrevocably connected, by history, by other species and by the roaring miraculous sea itself, to the rest of the world.
But sometimes I wonder if it isn’t a mirage, as if, once we turn to leave, it might just vanish into a sea mist.