The Azores

1994


    There are not many places that are liked by everyone who visits them.

     I have never been to Ireland, but everyone I know who has tells me that they enjoyed the island of poets.  Everyone likes New Zealand, except perhaps a minority of Kiwis, who wander the world in a futile search for a country as beautiful as their own, but more sophisticated.  Everyone likes Seville, Spain.  I do too, even though I was once robbed there.  And in the safest generalization of all, everyone likes the Azores, the nine Portuguese Islands out in the Atlantic eight hundred to a thousand miles west of Lisbon.

    James Michener wrote in IBERIA that whether you prefer Spain or Portugal depends on which you visit first.  He had first gone to Spain and preferred it; his wife first to Portugal and preferred it. 

    I first visited Portugal more than a decade ago, solo sailing two boats to the marina at Vilamoura on the Algarve, the south coast, one from England and one later in the year from Malta.  And perhaps for this reason, while I like Madrid and  the hill towns in the south of Spain, I prefer Lisbon and Portugal.

    As a sailor, I have great respect for the little country which five hundred years ago with an estimated population at the time of only one million, sent ships on voyages into the unknown more uncertain than a flight to the moon, justifying the Portuguese claim that their seafarers were “First In All Oceans.”   According to Genoese maps, those sailors and fishermen discovered the Azores between 1317 and 1339, and like the peripatetic Kiwis, they might as well have stopped then, for they searched the world without finding a fairer place to live, though there are more sophisticated.  That the Azores are not sophisticated is one of their virtues.

    One does not have to approach the Azores under sail, but it helps.  You can fly in: both from the Portuguese mainland and directly from the U.S., specifically from Boston, to which a great many Portuguese fishermen found their way from the nearby offshore fishing banks. I considered this while delivering a 46’ cutter in the other direction this year, making the 2000 mile passage from Boston to the Azores in an easy 15 days.  There is no question in my mind that Portuguese fishermen made that passage, which is only twice as far as the distance out from Lisbon, long before Columbus. 

    In 1988 Jill and I approached the Azores from the south, having sailed 4000 miles nonstop from St. Helena, and spent a week at the marina at Horta on the island of Faial before sailing for the European mainland, a week that later caused me to call Horta the best small marina in the world.  Now, in June of 1994, as our crew of three approached the island from the west, I wondered if the place had changed, for if it had, I thought, it could not possibly be for the better. 

    As one grows older, certainly he changes himself, but the world also becomes more crowded and more regulated, and with technology, more homogenized.  I have seen the South Pacific change dramatically after the construction of airports and the launching of television satellites.  In 1978 you could not make a telephone call from most of French Polynesia.  By 1990, you could not only make telephone calls and send faxs, but, thanks to Euro MTV, young Polynesians mostly dressed and tried to look like Michael Jackson and Madonna, which provides a useful working definition of the difference between change and progress.

    The Azores, named after the Portuguese word for the goshawk, are high volcanic islands.  Two stand isolated to the west; two, including the largest, San Miguel, to the east; and five, including Faial, in the center.  The highest, Pico, rises to more than 9,000’.   Major eruptions have taken place on both Pico and Faial in recent decades.  Although the climate in the Azores is tempered by the Gulf Stream, with average temperatures in the winter in the mid-50ties and in summer in the low-70ties, Pico is so high that snow accumulates on its peak in winter.                 

    Horta is one of the classic world ports.   Most boats crossing the Atlantic from west to east stop there for a few days of rest and repair, and it is a popular destination for European boats, at the outer limits of what is reachable during the common four-week European summer vacation. 

    Although dwarfed by nearby Pico, the highest point on Faial is 4,000’ high and often visible from a greater distance when Pico is lost in clouds.  As we sailed near, I saw the green terraced hillsides, with fields divided by low stone flower-covered walls.  People have lived here a long time and have found a way to use all the land possible, just as they have in Asia.  From the sea Faial’s terraces and walls remind me of Bali.

    We rounded the point and powered through the breakwater.  The number of masts inside the harbor surprised me.  In 1988 Jill and I had arrived in May at the time of maximum migration of charter boats from their winter waters in the Caribbean to their summer homes in the Med.; but in June of 1994, the harbor seemed even busier.  I was relived to see little evidence of new construction on the hills behind the town.  While there are slips, none was available for a boat the size of ours, so, after clearing with the officials at the port captain’s office, we rafted up to another boat beside Horta’s famous sea wall.

    Cruising sailors are no longer a novelty, but they are made to feel welcome in Horta, which is accustomed to being a transit stop--the Pan American seaplanes refueled there on the first Transatlantic air service--and where they represent a substantial boost to the local economy.  But the Azores are primarily agricultural and the people who live there have chosen to remain or return rather than pursue the chimera of greater affluence elsewhere, and I would like to believe that greed is not their primary motive.  To whatever degree generalizations are valid, I find the Portuguese to be dignified, restrained, courteous, friendly, and overwhelming responsive to any attempt to speak a few words of their language, particularly if one does not confuse it with Spanish.

  

    I do not know how the tradition began of sailors painting the names of their boats and dates of their visit to Horta on the sea wall, but this graffiti has not only been permitted but refined into a minor art form, which spreads beyond the wall to cover the concrete walkways around the marina.   Empty space is now at a premium, but weather, effacing the oldest of the often elaborate drawings, ensures natural recycling.  Strolling about and viewing the works and/or trying to find those left by sailors and boats you know or may have left yourself is good for a few minutes each time you go ashore.  In 1990, my favorites were a finely shaded drawing of a nude woman, which as far as I can determine was what the sailors on that particular boat hoped to find in the South Pacific, and the statement, “The first 48’ bed to be sailed across the Atlantic was slept in by...” followed by a couple of names I have conveniently forgotten.

    Having arrived on a Saturday, when banks were closed, we went to a well known sailor’s bar, Peter’s Sport, where I knew we could change money at official rates, and then walked along the narrow, cobbled main street in search of a restaurant.  The buildings are old, gray stone, some painted, some decorated with tiles, mostly well cared for and neat.  I have gone a half a dozen years without being in the same country for more than two months, yet this was the first time I had been outside the U.S. for almost two years.   The foreign voices, the often unintelligible signs in shop windows, the smells and sounds, all gave me pleasure and caused me to realize again how natural an expatriate I am.

    The Azores do not have great cuisine, but portions are generous and prices, even in the pleasant restaurant we finally found overlooking the harbor, are moderate.  A couple of bottles of Vinho verde, green wine because it is made from young grapes, shared between the three of us helped.     

    A specious set of priorities caused us to spend only two days in Horta before sailing the sixty miles to the island of Terceira, where I could board the Transatlantic flight from Lisbon to Boston.  That is not long enough.   For visitors with more time, I recommend a drive around the island in a rental car. 

    A winding road clings to hillsides and passes through a few small villages, providing recurring spectacular views of the ocean far below.  At the west end of Faial at Ponta Dos Capelinhos the land and lighthouse were covered by a volcanic eruption in 1957-58, which to the observer seems more recent.  Near the center of the island is the Caldeira, an enormous crater, more than a mile in diameter and 600 yards deep, surrounded by blue hydrangeas and cedars, junipers, beeches, and ferns and moss.  Old churches, forts, and monuments abound, including some recalling the Azoreans’ whaling tradition, but none is of so great interest that it must not be missed.  In the Azores the buildings are part of the ambiance, but secondary to the beauty of the natural setting and the character of the people.

    Terceira, which I had not previously visited, has a satisfactory fair weather harbor at the main town of  Angra Do Heroismo, which in 1534 was the first place in the Azores officially to become a town.  The reference to heroes was added when Angra was a center of resistance to an interval of Spanish rule late in the same century.  Being volcanic, most of the Azores fall steeply into the ocean.  Above the harbor at Angra is an impressive seawall thirty or forty feet high, which tells any sailor that it is not a place to be in a winter storm.

    Angra is larger than Horta and more historic.  I spent a night, waiting for my flight, at a small hotel in a perfect room with a four poster bed, a leaky shower, and, when I opened a shuttered window, a lovely view out over red tiled roofs and white buildings.

    The UN has listed Angra as part of something called the “world historical patrimony.”  

    After I moved ashore, I ate lunch alone at a small restaurant:  fish this time, not bad, but not great, about the same price and quality as the beef I ate in Horta--then wandered about, looking at various old buildings, in one of which Vasco da Gama’s brother was buried in 1499 after he died during the return from the first voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India.  Near sunset I had a couple of drinks at a table set out on the cobblestones and thought about the woman with whom in Horta I had fallen in love.  I had, of course, thought of her all during that day, for I did not then know if I would ever see her again.  Portugal has become my favorite country in the world in which to fall in love, although the women I do so with are American or English not Portuguese.

    Whatever your thoughts, the Azores are one of the most pleasant places in the world to sit and quietly think them.