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Azores archipelago, Portugal | BCBusinessBack: The BCBusiness Guide to World Travel
Eschewing mass tourism, Portugal’s Azores archipelago is a slice of heaven on earth. “I miss the smells of the sea, the flowers, the hydrangeas, the roses, the cedar,” Bento Raposo tells me. Bento and his wife, who immigrated from the Azores to Canada in the early 1960s, are back for a nostalgic visit with their daughter and are dining in a local restaurant in Ponta Delgada, the Azorean capital on São Miguel island.
“I miss the smells of the sea, the flowers, the hydrangeas, the roses, the cedar,” Bento Raposo tells me. Bento and his wife, who immigrated from the Azores to Canada in the early 1960s, are back for a nostalgic visit with their daughter and are dining in a local restaurant in Ponta Delgada, the Azorean capital on São Miguel island.
“You wake up at 5 a.m. and you can smell it. Everything here is natural,” he says as we study the buffet of Azorean soups, cheeses, fish and other local specialties.
The Azores, an isolated archipelago of nine volcanic islands far out in the Atlantic to the west of Lisbon, are stunning pieces of geography. Ponta Delgada, the largest city on the main island of São Miguel, is the gateway to the islands, providing the only air connections from North America. A large Canadian flag fluttering over the honorary consul’s office on a black basalt side street and the Hotel Canadiano in the town are reminders that this remote little Portuguese island has a strong Canadian connection, with thousands of Azoreans having settled in Canada in the late 1950s and early ’60s.
Best Bed The Hotel do Colegio, adapted from a 19th-century urban edifice, is in the traditional Azorean style with black basalt and whitewash. Doubles from $86.
Best Meal Restaurante Adega Regional, a modest but atmospheric restaurant in the centre of Ponta Delgada, serves excellent regional specialties – especially grilled fish.
Can’t miss On a clear day, drive up to the Miradouro da Serra da Barrosa for stunning views of Santa Maria Island and Lagos do Fogo (Lakes of Fire), which a volcanic eruption created in the 16th century.
On a Sunday, Ponta Delgada is ghost-town-quiet, the streets empty but for a few elderly ladies gossiping on a corner. From the imposing São Sebastião church bells are pealing, playing beautiful tunes such as “Song of Love,” which echoes across the empty square. It is a reminder that this is a pious, traditional place, with numerous churches, chapels, convents and other religious buildings.
The extensive use of black basalt – sometimes polished, sometimes with a rough-sponge texture – in the town’s distinctive architecture and cobblestone streets gives it a unique character. However, the black-and-white mosaic sidewalks with patterns such as circles, squares, waves, stars and twisted rope, recall those in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro.
This small island, just 64 by 16 kilometres, has excellent roads and is easily explored by rental car or taxi. On an especially sunny, clear day, I set out with local resident Serafina Sylva to explore. The twisting, climbing road passes forest and farmland – stunning scenery as green as Ireland and as tidy as rural England, with orderly hedges or basalt stone walls dividing the hillside fields where dairy cattle graze. Most striking is the lack of commercial signage, billboards, fast food ads, shopping malls or used car lots. The Azores feel like some Caribbean islands before mass tourism arrived. In this tranquil island’s small coastal towns, men loiter in the streets, seemingly the main activity. “They are polishing the walls,” Serafina says.
From the viewpoint of Pico do Ferro, she points down to the town of Furnas far below, with its tropical gardens, hot springs and a flat area at the edge of Lagoa das Furnas, a vast crater lake where men gather around steaming piles of earth. This is nature’s kitchen, where cooks bury great stewpots of meat and vegetables in the steaming hot earth to cook for six hours.
At Restaurante Tony’s we lunch on this cozido nas caldeiras, which translates as “cooked in the furnace.” Piled on the platter are massive helpings of beef, pork, chicken, chorizo, blood sausage, white and red cabbage, potatoes, yams and carrots. It is a hearty meal, if a bit bland.
The nearby 12.5-hectare Terra Nostra Botanical Gardens offers a lush display of native and imported plants, trees and ferns. The pineapple pines, bird of paradise and many other flowers give off the moist, rich aroma of a tropical jungle, while the dense, varied foliage recalls a Jurassic Park setting.
In contrast, the nearby Caldeiras das Furnas, a hot springs grotto, is like a medieval vision of hell. A sign warns, “Be careful, natural boiling water,” and the gurgling, bubbling caldera and fumaroles, with steam and foul sulphurous gas bellowing up, look decidedly dangerous. The whole area reeks of rotten eggs. In his reveries, Bento forgot to mention this smell.