Sao Miguel, Azores Islands, Portugal

An absolutely gorgeous view awaited us at this lookout.  There was a cloud coming in on the left side.

We flew from Madeira Island, Portugal with Azores Airlines to Sao Miguel Island in the Azores which is also a Portuguese Island. We picked up our car and drove to the Delta Hotel Azores and checked in and left quickly because we still had half a day to sight-see. We drove straight north and ended up seeing the other side of the island within 15 minutes. We drove east to Furnas and experienced some amazing lookouts and saw how pretty this island is.

An old volcano crater lake.  This photo taken from the lookout.

The cloud moving across the mountain.

The lookout provided absolutely gorgeous views.

I loved the vegetation and the moss.

The vegetation was very thick
on this island.

Sao Miguel is very bucolic looking with an unreal green color different from Ireland green.  There are tons of cows lolling around in the fields some on the road and grass pastures. There is the odd tractor on the road as well. As far as the eye could see there was beauty.  This island is not as mountainous or volcanic looking as Madeira Island, it is softer and prettier with rolling green hills and higher softer mountains. It's also a very sleepy Island with the largest town where we stayed Ponta Delgada a city of 56,000 people right on the south of the island on the coast. 

The Azores also had their share of rainbows.  This one was particularly intense.

This plant covers the island and is called Hedychium or Kahili Ginger which is an invasive species introduced as an ornamental plant from the Himalayas and now covers hillsides.  It is pretty but conservation efforts are now underway to manually remove them.

This little beauty the Hydrangea loved by all was introduced from Japan.  It is not endemic to the Azores and it has quickly become widespread symbolizing the Azores forming natural fences along the roads with blue beauty.

This photo was our view from our balcony at the Delta Azores Hotel.  These cows were grazing and forming patterns on the green grass.  I did not like that they were chained thus forming semi circles of grazed grass.

Blues and greens are the colors of this island.

Very lovely countryside.

Unlike Madeira Island, Sao Miguel has many abandoned homes when the great migration occurred of many Azoreans leaving the country for Canada and the USA.

This humongous rock looked like a human laying down on its back.  For perspective there is a genuine human fishing on the bottom left hand side.

This is a volcanic island and we wanted to see the caldeiros or cauldrons.  You can smell them before you can see them.  We drove into Furnas which is on the north east side of the island to check these out.  The area was very pretty and there was some sort of town get together near the caldeiros.  They were all making hot chocolate filling their mugs up with water from the town water source which in Furnas happens to be hot almost boiling. They were all drinking this and many were adding extra libation to their mugs.  They looked like a happy bunch of people and I wanted to join them.  It is a unique area with the steam coming out of the caldeiros and steam coming out of sewer vents and out of the earth.  There is always that strong sulfur smell to accompany it.  There were a couple of caldeiros that were just boiling water constantly and I am not sure why they would not use that for a heat source?  It was a really cool area and we would have liked to hang out longer but Dax wanted to see the sun set in a particular spot so we were off. Unfortunately we ran out of time and the sun did not wait for us to set and we missed it.

Like a boiling, bubbling witch's cauldron, the caldera constantly boils at an ungodly temperature.

The steam and sulfur helps to form beautiful moss carpets on the ground.

This was the area to look down from a barrier.  This was fascinating to watch the water boil, but the smell is gross.

Surrounding countryside of Furnas is gorgeous.

This ground is hot to the touch and there are many warning signs.

More beautiful thick moss.

These looked like Moss Balls.

Darren looking on at the boiling calderas.

We headed back to our hotel, had dinner at the hotel and packed it in early because we had a big 'Dax planned Day' of hiking and site-seeing ahead of us.

We awoke at 6:00 a.m. with the thought of leaving the hotel at 8:00 a.m. which is extremely early for Darren and I. Dax was with us and it was his last day of holidays before he went back to University.  We got up and had our buffet breakfast at the Delta hotel and drove north to Cascata Do Salto Do Cabrito.  We had to walk down to the base of this waterfall to take it all in and that was about a 7-minute walk down an extremely steep hairpin road.  The waterfall was terrific and then unfortunately we had to walk up that extremely steep hell road back to our car.

Daxtin was first down the steep road.
If you had the time, each of these stops were so beautiful that you just wanted to have a picnic lunch.

Cascata do Salto do Cabrito had two levels of height and was very pretty.

We continued our drive towards the hiking area and came upon a Tea Plantation which we have never seen before.  There were tours available but we only had time for a quick stop and some photos.

The Tea Factory sign. Tea Farms in Europe are rare, this happens to be the oldest in all of Europe.

Very unusual looking when you first drive by and then finally realize what it is.

There is even a hiking trail through the Tea fields.

It was quite pretty.

We stopped at two more lookouts.  One overlooked Furnas where we had been the day before and the other was inhabited by many cats and it had bathrooms.

There are many different deciduous trees on the island.

A pretty view of the valley of Furnas.  You can see the sulfur fumes and smoke rising in the center.

Dax photo-bombed me.

Furnas sulfur plumes.

The drive along the way up to the next lookout.  This reminded all of us of St. Johns NFLD.

Many kitties greeted us at the parking lot of the next lookout.

The cats lived at this lookout and they had great views if they desired them.

We moved on to to our hike that Dax had planned for us, apparently it is the most popular one on the island. It is called the Trilho do Sanguinho trail which honestly is now in my top five trails that I have ever done. It can take about 2 hours but we ended up taking three because of knee issues and photo stops. We parked in this tiny little village called Faial da Terra which is quite picturesque and pretty. 

Town of Faial da Terra which was a pretty little town with a rushing creek.

The town is located at the bottom of a steep gorge.  The road was scary on the way down, yikes.

The homes here were quite well-kept and pretty made from traditional volcanic rock.

Nothing spells homey like a 
clothesline.

Colorful street lamps.

There is a raised Levada directing water down to the town and you continue to the left of this following this rapidly flowing creek which is a beautiful sound to walk to. 

Darren looking at the Levada which was running high with water.

There were many ups and downs and boulder scrambling and walking over little bridges which were basically on the water, some had water flowing over them. Thank goodness for my Hoka runners with their high sole which kept me dry.  There were lots of times where it was rock face on our left side and a steep cliff on the right side and most of the time there was a rope and steel railing to get you to stay away from the edges of the very steep cliff faces. But if you fell the rope wouldn't hold you, it was more for comfort and guidance. 

Trail head began behind Dax.  It was a steep climb right at the start.

There were mini waterfalls along the trail with one behind Daxtin in this photo.

Darren just traversed over the creek bed.  There was a creative railing strapped together with a wooden pallet.

We had to dodge many trees along the way.  Trees fall in the forest continuously.  Rock cliff face was a constant along the way.

Dax was often ahead of me but it provided me with great photo opportunities.

Even in the flat areas of the trail, it was quite pretty.

I love this photo.

This faux bridge was dry when we 
crossed but water was flowing
over it on the return.

We mostly followed this creek.

The top of a waterfall behind me.  I found a soft moss covered rock to grab a break.

Yup, I had to climb up there and follow him on the trail.

We came upon so many chickens and waterfalls but there were two main waterfalls and they were absolutely gorgeous. 

We saw about 30 chickens on the trail.  They were not shy.

More chickens

Darren was a bit peeved because this chicken was behind him and it passed him going up the trail.

There were choices within the trails to walk to three different waterfalls and we chose the Salto do Prego which was quite a large volume of water pouring down and beautiful.

Trail Map showing the choices.

If it would have been a summer day we would have went swimming.

Salto do Prego Waterfall, the lower half of it.

Can you spot Dax in this photo?

The upper half of the waterfall
and Dax is also in this photo.  
Can you spot Dax in the photo?

Its always exciting when you can begin to hear the rush of the waterfall in the distance and you realize that you are near.

We were at 14° which was perfect for hiking. The Azores is temperate and does not get any colder than this.  The trail itself was muddy in certain areas, but for the most part a very good trail.  It used to be a cobblestone trail through the mountain area from Faial da Terra to Sanguinho.  When the town was forgotten in the mid 1900's, the trail had to be rediscovered later for tourism.

It was a bit of squishy creek crossing here.  If you fell to the left, you had a long fall.

Another waterfall along the way.  
Dax is to the right for perspective.

Dax in the middle of the forest.

These plants cover the island.

Darren climbing up a tricky area where you had to duck under a large fallen tree.  There were interesting lichen on the rock on the right.

Sanguiho was an abandoned village, many Portuguese people emigrated to Canada and the US for better prospects and Sanguinho was difficult to access, but is now being restored. 

A super cute restored house which is now an AirB&B.

Landslide that had ripped through a house in the background.

Every town had one.

In the village of Sanguinho where there are many traditional volcanic stone houses.  Some have fallen and are now ruins to the left of Dax.

A landslide had also ripped through one of the houses. We were gawking at one of these houses and all of a sudden a peacock walked out of one of the abandoned doorways and then another peacock which was a female followed her mate.

They came out of the house which the landslide had claimed.

What were peacocks doing up there? We continued walking through the little restored village and came upon the Bar. We knew there was a bar in Sanguinho because we read about it and there were signs for inspiration. 

There were trail markers and the tiny Bar sign nailed to the tree in the background.

This cute little Bar had very little variety, everything has to be carried in on their back.  I indulged in a glass of wine and I'm pretty sure it was fortified wine,it was quite strong.   The Azores have their own version of Madeira Wine.  

The village cats found us and they were some of the prettiest cats mainly Persians that were very friendly and demanded our attention. We found a gorgeous viewpoint where we could look out over Faial da Terra, the town that we had walked up from. We spent probably a half an hour there just relaxing and chilling after this second section of the hike. 

Resident Persian. AKA Demando.

Demando the Cat was all over Darren.

The views were so pretty of the town below and always the ocean views.

Dax was being stalked by 3 cats that wanted his attention.

We packed up and headed back down to Faial da Terra. This was not a super easy hike, I would classify it as moderate. There were some challenging areas and it was pretty from start to finish. It was 3 hours of hiking past gorgeous waterfalls of various sizes and lots of boulders. It was just super pretty with no boring spots whats so ever.

This bunny and his friend were towards the end of the trail.  This one let me touch him.

We drove to King's lookout after the hike which overlooks the two Crater lakes of Sete Cidades Calderes. One lake is blue- Lagoa Azul and one is green- Lagoa Verde.  It was cloudy all day and the colors didn't stand out like they would normally do if it was sunny day, it was still beautiful.

These are crater lakes that formed after the last eruption in the 1600's.

The constant greens and blues of the Azores.

Stunning views awaited us.

You can see a slight color change of the two lakes which are separated by a bridge which we later drove on.

A cute calf laying by the road side.

We stopped for lunch in the town on the crater lake side.  We however had plans to head down to the ocean, down some scary roads and get to Ponta da Ferraria Beach that has natural hot spring vents underneath the floor of the ocean.  It warms up the swimming area water temperatures. We brought our bathing suits and towels and had plans to swim. It was almost dark and it would have been another 20 minutes walking down to the beach and another 30-35 minutes back up the steep cliff walk. There was also the sign warning of potential landslides that had closed the beach down to swimming that we became aware of.  This however did not stop numerous people from swimming.  Cannells are not risk-takers. This would have been a first for us but we had to pass. 

This island of San Miguel is an active volcanic area but has dormant volcanoes on it.  Occasionally we saw active steam/ sulfur vents occurring in random ditches. It is an island capable of erupting at any time but with warning.

It was a great day of sightseeing and hiking. We drove the 40 minutes back to Ponta Delgado and had a good nights sleep to prepare for the flight over the pond and back home.

A beautiful sunset over the ocean for our last European evening abroad.

Dry Stone Walls are throughout the island.  Volcanic rocks were cleared for agriculture and the walls helped to create boundaries between properties and also micro-climates for vineyards, helping to absorb rain and stop the wind.