Sao Miguel Island, Azores – an emerald jewel in the Atlantic

We have been on Sao Miguel Island for three fun-filled days and we are pretty much fully recovered from the jet-lag.

A downside of booking your own travel is that there is no one else to blame when your plans may not have been fully thought-out. Note to self: Do Not book two red-eye flights back to back!

Our arrival in Sao Miguel was easy. We were off the plane, had our backpacks on, picked up our rental car and left the airport in less than 30 minutes. Great, except it was 6:30 am local time and our check-in wasn’t for another 10 hours! It turns out that this day was also a catholic religious holiday of some type that nobody could explain. But being a holiday, the traffic was light which was good for me to learn the local driving habits. The in-city roads here are extremely narrow with barely room for two compact cars to pass. Add to that, buildings at the edge of the road and people park on one-side of the road all make for some tricky driving. If you are driving and the parked cars are on your side of the street, you are obligated to “dive” your car into an open space between the parked cars whenever there was s oncoming traffic. This was not immediately obvious to me but the locals were quick to point a finger at my lack of knowledge of the local driving customs.

Terri had made a short list of things to do, and with our free time we immediately picked a spot to see. As tired as we were, not having seen a real bed in 2 nights, we were completely energized by the beauty of this island. The country roads are lined with hydrangeas, honeysuckle and ferns. There are “happy” cows scattered throughout the countryside and with each few miles travelled you discover a different Azorean parish/village each having their own church prominently featured.

With some local coffees, (extremely small and not easily ordered), we drove to Sete Cidades, a lake in the basin of an inactive volcano crater. I cannot properly describe the beauty of this area nor do our pictures do it proper justice.

Later in the day, we swam in natural pools by the ocean and cruised along the beautiful coastline to our Airbnb in Pico De Pedra, where we enjoyed our best sleep in years.