Azores 2026 - Great Sadness Followed by Great Joy

Ana had such a good sleep she is considering only sleeping every second night from here on in. Her nocturnal hours are regularly dominated by bathroom breaks, sweaty hot flashes, jerking around, yanking sheets off me, closet rearranging, checking her phone, thrashing, moaning, and sometimes just flat out studying the swirling popcorn ceiling finish with wide-eyed insomnia. Fortunately, there was really nothing left to do for today’s funeral so she was able to sleep in and catch up on a few of the previous evening’s lost hours.

Today, on our second attempt, and with the help of Tio Manuel, we were able to do what we needed to do with our banking in Vila Franca, then we took him out for coffee at the marina and enjoyed a lovely visit. He is the eldest brother in my mother-in-law Maria’s family and we have become very close with several branches of the Medeiros/Cabrinha clan over the years, both in Canada and here in the Azores. What runs through the family is a spirit of kindness and generosity and the unstoppable ability to have fun. They are a crazy bunch and we are very fortunate to be part of it.

After lunch back at home we all dressed up in the best clothes we had (hadn’t packed much for funeral attire) and went to the chapel early to greet attendees. Ana Margarida had spent the night there and got a reasonable amount of sleep on the provided leather couches as she kept Tia Ana company.

The service was quite short and obviously all in Portuguese, using a lot of religious language that was hard for me to follow, but Ana told me he knew Tia Ana well and spoke of her dedication to the Church, her generosity, and her kind nature and that she would be sadly missed by the entire community.

I need time to process all that happened in the previous 24 hours. I feel my earlier thoughts and assumptions about the Portuguese relationship with death were not accurate. Or let’s say they were incomplete. They certainly have been challenged and expanded.

The sadness of the day was followed up by great happiness and joy at a family gathering at Tio Luis (Tio Manuel’s youngest brother) and Tia Geneveva’s home. This was planned earlier in the week and happened to come at exactly the right time. It was an explosion of food, drinks, chatter, garden tours, and a whole lot of male grandchildren of various ages that together comprise Tio Luis’s personal clone army – all wirey, muscled, handsome, and smiling all the time. One of the two granddaughters was there – Iris – who is a real beauty and said to be regularly first in line at the late night dance clubs. I’m sure Stella and Iris would get along famously, and I hope they get a chance to meet soon.

It was a tough day followed up by an exceptionally fun night.

Azores 2026 - We Lost A Special Person Today

Tia Ana survived the night and in the morning I took John to the hospital to see her. The two Ana’s hadn’t gotten much (if any) sleep, so I took my Ana for a walk to the nearby Parque Atlantico mall for a strong coffee and some food while John and Ana Margarida maintained vigil. Ana wanted to stay until the end so I took John back to the house then went down to the beach to enjoy the beautiful, sunny day. I always imagine we will have a lot of down time on these trips but it never works out like that as our schedule quickly fills up with family events and outings. But this morning, it was just me and the giant waves and the black sand and my thoughts. I enjoyed the time immensely and considered many things. Sailing to the Azores. Our kids visiting the island as adults. The eventuality of death. Learning to surf. Not being at work. The stickiness of sand. The difficulty of learning Portuguese. When did I last shave?

The mind roams and wanders.

I returned home to pick up Ana’s mom and took her to the hospital to see Tia Ana. I circled the area hunting for a parking spot, which took a very, very long time. At 2pm Ana messaged me with the news that her aunt had passed away.

The world had just lost a loving, joyful, beautiful person.

From here, things moved very quickly. Within a few hours the funeral had been completely arranged for the following day and Tia Ana was prepared and transported to the chapel at the cemetery. Ana and I made a quick stop at home for dinner, then packed up the elders and we all returned to the chapel to greet visitors for several hours.

It had been a mentally and physically exhausting day. But we felt very lucky this had happened while we were here visiting instead of having to grieve from afar.

Azores 2026 - Western Tour

There’s always a certain amount of administration for us to do when we visit here. We have a Portuguese bank account which is used to pay taxes on the land we own, and we have a family member here as power of attorney on it, which requires period updating or changing. Ana is a Portuguese citizen so her citizenship card and passport expire regularly, as do her parents’. All of these require trips to banks or a variety of government offices, which means we have become relatively adept at carrying out this administration, but quite used to discovering we’re missing that one document (at home, filed away) required to finish things off. Today, we made the first attempt to sort out a banking issue in Vila Franca (as the nearby branch had permanently closed about a week ago). It was a bust. We’d need to return tomorrow with Ana’s uncle Manuel to sign a document.

After the banking, we took the folks on a little island tour. As we passed by our land in Feteiras, we saw a healthy crop of 12 foot tall bamboo cane growing on it, which we should be cutting down for the neighbour’s sake, but we discovered a few years ago that if we let it grow, the municipality will eventually cut it down for us, haul it away and they don’t charge anything. Each time we visit the Azores we are faced with a decision on what to do with this land. And each time we decide to do nothing. The land has a sweeping view to the south overlooking the beauty and terror of the Atlantic Ocean. It is a large lot, perfect for building a house we could use for ourselves or to rent. It is located in a quiet part of the island, but still only a ten minute drive from the airport and fifteen from downtown Ponta Delgada. The only drawback is the town. Feteiras is nice, but it is very sleepy, and there is not much of interest to walk to. It is a perfect getaway location to reconnect with your inner thoughts and think about life and all that, but you need to drive or take the bus to get anywhere interesting or see mammals other than cows. We’ll see.

We drove to the western end of the island along a series of winding and scenic secondary roads, passing through the towns of Relva, Feteiras, Candelaria, Ginetes, and finally to Mosteiros, and after a little tour around the coastline, went to the restaurant we always visit here, but it was unexpectedly closed. So we found another, which turned out to be just as good, and had a terrific view over the ocean. John and I had the local swordfish, which was delish, Ana had a pork dish, and Maria ordered this breaded chicken platter that came with enough food for three people. The Portuguese like to slap a fried egg on top of their meals (which I think you should eat first), and Maria kept moving her fried egg around on her plate. It originally sat on the chicken and was plump and plucky. She moved it off the chicken and atop her fries then ate a piece of chicken. Then she moved it atop the rice and ate some fries. Then she plopped it right on her salad and ate some rice then some fries. When she was about to put it back on the rice to eat some salad I intercepted it with my fork. By this time it was punctured, limp, and melancholy so I ate the whole thing in one bite and put it out of its misery. She seemed relieved. I was happy to assist.

Back at base camp a manageable fam jam with some of the cousins ensued, and I learned that the nature of fresh potatoes here are such that even the slightest mashing motion turns the fragile and tender beauties into thick unsightly paste. To divert attention from my disastrous potato dish, I made a joke about the old folks using the potato paste to stick in their dentures instead of the Polygrip. For some reason the Portuguese elders here all regularly remove their teeth to eat, which doesn’t make any sense at all, but in any case my joke fell flat. Maybe I butchered the delivery. Maybe they couldn’t hear me. Or maybe I’m JUST NOT THAT FUNNY. But I think it was a language thing.

At around 10:30 pm Ana received a call from her aunt’s best friend and caregiver Ana Margarida. The news was that her aunt’s conditioned had worsened considerably and she was back in the hospital. Ana and I drove there immediately to see her and could see it would not be long. I returned home at 12:30 and Ana stayed with Ana Margarida to be with Tia Ana throughout the night.

Azores 2026 - Gaps in Local Knowledge and a Fairy Tale Dreamscape

It was a rainy morning and Ana needed more time in bed after a very poor sleep so I spent some time doing some writing and eating fresh buns and bananas. We overdid it with Ana’s mom with the walking yesterday and today she could barely get out of bed, and when she did, the first stop was to hobble to the couch to lay down. Sorry Maria.

Earlier this year I had made an “Insiders Guide to Sao Miguel” map for my cousin Megan and Adam and spawn who were visiting this summer. I included all of our favourite spots (if you want the link send me a note…the island is busy enough with tourists, don’t need to advertise all the gems they haven’t overrun yet) but also a bunch of places that looked interesting but we were yet to visit. So today we headed to the north-east side of the island to start with a walking trail that led to a triple waterfall (Miradouro das Tres Bicas). We drove to the town of Lomba de Maia then struggled to figure out where the trail began. There was a very helpful signpost with two trail signs for the “Trilho Municipal Da Barquinha”, one pointed left and one pointed right. Nearby was a trail map that showed the trail route but wasn’t very clear on exactly where it started. However, it did rate the trail difficulty as EASY in large, green letters. At times like these it’s always good to ask a local. A lady approached on the street.

“Excuse me,” Ana said in Portuguese, “are you from here?”

“Yes, I’m from here,” she replied.

“Can you tell us how to get to the trail that takes us to the waterfalls?”

She looked at us blankly. “What waterfalls?”

“Tres Bicas, it’s called.”

“Not around here. But I think maybe it’s in the Furnas region,” she said, pointing 33 kilometres to the south.

“Uh okay. Obrigada.”

Remembering from previous travels that locals don't have a clue about anything interesting near where they live, we just started walking east and once through town found a tiny marker and stone staircase leading down into the forest, well hidden and clearly unbeknownst to locals. I had been successful in getting Ana to wear decent shoes but I did not insist on athletic wear, which she didn’t bring on the trip anyway, I didn’t expect we were going to be doing any serious hiking. Well, the trail started out innocently enough, but soon started dropping, and dropping, down a series of natural paths, ancient rock steps, and tree branch handrails, all quite beautiful. 

The faint sound of the waterfalls slowly gained power as we descended further and further into the forest. Finally ,we found a sign pointing towards the Tres Bicas, also identifying it as a “Difficult Alternate Path”. Well I wasn’t stopping after coming this far and Ana decided the same so we dropped down what felt like a few thousand more feet as it got slippier and muckier, but we finally reached the waterfalls just as Ana was about to give up. It was quite spectacular, and there were no other humans anywhere. Beautiful, but we learned a valuable lesson: they hired mountain goats to rate the trails in the Azores. Or maybe we are just wimpy.

The next stop was less intense, but intensely beautiful. The Parque Da Ribeira Dos Caldeiroes, near the town of Santana, is a fantasy watermill scene within a mystical fairy tale. Multiple waterfalls, steep flowered and ferned embankments, goldfish ponds, aqueducts, levadas, stone mill buildings, and flagstoned pathways. It was surreal. And there were just a handful of tourists there, plus a band of canyoners who must have been rappelling down the rock faces, but they were nearly done by the time we saw them.

I’m not sure why we haven’t been to this place before, but it proves once again that this small island is uniquely blessed with incredible sights and experiences.

It was time to dial things back so we drove to Moofana Café, a place I’d found that promised unforgettable cheeseburgers. It was a groovy spot, just a small shack beside a farm on the outskirts of Lomba de Maia. I don’t think they had a menu; just one item, with or without cheese. So we ordered a mini Sagres beer, a Coke, and two cheeseburgers, then sat at one of the outdoor tables, enjoying the bursts of sunshine that burned through the intermittent clouds. The food arrived and it was delicious. We ate the burgers as slow as we could, but still way too fast, then chilled for a while before paying the 15 euro bill and hitting the road.

Moofana will be the newest entry on my “Sao Miguel for Insiders” map.

Last stop on our whirlwind day trip was the fine city of Ponta Delgada, ocean city, port city, the city coloured in black and white, the city whose waterfront has few equals. We drove into downtown and took the ramp down into the underground parking which spans the entire waterfront, hidden underground, and is a goddamn engineering marvel. Anytime I see any stupid infrastructure at home, or have somebody telling me some common sense city engineering is “just too difficult” or better yet, “impossible”, I think about this parking garage. It should be one of the highlights of anybody’s visit here, and I’m totally serious.

As it had only been two years since our last visit, there weren’t many changes in the city that we could spot, the only significant one being the Peter Café Sport retail shop in the Portas do Mar had closed, which probably saved me a bundle, as last time I walked out with a bunny hug, t-shirt, coffee mug, and cool oil rain hat, all branded, all full price. And I never buy anything new, particularly clothes. I was a little sad to see this, but the rest of downtown was hopping and lively.

We had our first early night of the trip. After dinner with the seniors, we retired to our room and watched a French movie set in Montreal called Red Rooms. Not for the faint of heart.

Azores 2026 - Experiments with Polygrip and Searching for the Family Playwright

Despite having visited the Azores 8 or 9 times now, we still hadn’t been to the Grutas do Carvao, a 5 km long, 10,000 year old lava tube cave that is within the city limits of Ponta Delgada. When we told the family we had tickets to the cave, we discovered none of them had ever been there either so we didn’t feel too bad.

The cave was interesting enough but we had gone with the short visit as opposed to the 3-4 hour tour where they allow only six people per week and you get to scramble through a couple kilometres of the cave. Ours was the mass market visit where they hammer through a thousand people per week and you only get to dip into the cave a very short distance. The visit was fine, but the most vivid memory I’ll take away from it was the one American amidst our group of 15 people from many countries. Look man, we have so many cool American friends, but honestly, who do you think was the one person who loudly told the group she was proudly from Seattle, asked all sorts of dumb questions, and insisted on touching the cave walls when instructed not to? Considering how the US has been treating most of the rest of the world lately (particularly Europe), you would think as an American it would be an opportune time to take a low profile.

From here we drove to the public library and regional archives to try and track down a play Ana’s grandfather had written in 1951.

Let me back up a bit.

Last year sometime, Ana’s mom casually mentioned that her father had been an actor and playwright. Ana’s mouth dropped. As the most enthusiast supporter and builder of arts and culture in our community, you’d think somebody in the family would have mentioned this before. But we should be used to it. Her mom drops this little fact bombs at regular intervals and it’s quite funny watching Ana get all crazy. Anyway, Ana brought this topic up yesterday during our 8-hour afternoon and evening eating and drinking session around the dinner table. Ana’s tio Manuel didn’t just remember this, but he repeated the first few stanzas of the play which he had memorized as a child of 13 years of age….75 years ago. Mouths dropped. Eyebrows rose. Bewildered looks. None of the cousins knew this about their grandfather. The elders of this family are a devious bunch.

The search was on for a copy of the play, which was based on a true story about a young local boy who was tending to his family’s cows and somehow got tangled up with a bull and was dragged through the village to his death. We were told the play was printed and performed many times throughout the island. So the first stop would be the city archives. Next stop would be searching through aged boxes in the house of Tia Maria de Luz – Ana’s mom’s older sister.

The helpful librarian couldn’t find the play in the archives, but we didn’t have much in the way of details for her – just the approximate year, the approximate title of the play, and even the approximate name of Ana’s grandfather, as there was a lengthy discussion the previous night on this topic. The Azoreans like to play fast and loose with names, so just when you think you know somebody, you discover their actual name is something completely different. For example, I didn’t even know that Ana was called “Paula” by her entire family until after I’d known her for over a year. The librarian did provide us with a large book containing the 1951 and 1952 weekly Oriental newspapers, Sao Miguel’s primary daily newspaper since 1835 right until today. We flipped though it, page by delicate page, looking for any mentions of the play, Ana’s grandfather, the death related to the actual incident, but we could not find anything. There were a lot of ads for fancy hats though.

We had our fill of academic research pursuits for the day so turned our attention to wandering the historic cobblestoned streets of Ponta Delgada and finding somewhere for lunch. Adega do Mestre Andre suited the bill just fine so we saddled up for a power lunch, surrounded by the top echelon of Ponta Delgada business folk. Turns out an Azorean power lunch takes a damn long time, as it should, and nobody was in a rush to go anywhere. Everything about the place seemed classic, from the fado instruments hanging from the wall, to the bottles of wine on shelves, to the servers older than us who had probably been there for many years or decades, and the cowboy saloon doors leading to the kitchen that swung outward and twice clobbered a patron returning from the WCs down the hall.

Our meals were excellent. We met the gentleman beside us, Miguel, who was a local guy enjoying a fine solo meal and looked as typical Portuguese as any person I’ve ever met. Ana dazzled him with her fluent Portuguese and I surprised him too with a line or two of the local lingo, which wasn’t great, but he just didn’t expect anything of the sort to come from a dude who looks like me.

We cruised back to home base and picked up Ana’s folks to visit John’s younger sister Tia Ana at the care home then we stopped at Santa Barbara beach for a look at the massive waves crashing in from the north winds, then proceeded to Ribeira Grande for a coffee in the town square. We were going our best to encourage Ana’s mom Maria to walk as much as possible as her mobility hasn’t been great of late and we felt the exercise would be good for her.

Back at home base cousin Natercia, hubby Paul Fernando, and beautiful daughter Leonore had arrived, so we made a communal dinner of spaghetti and slapped-together meat sauce with chorizo and garlic bread which all turned out rather well. The conversation meandered from here to there and landed on dentures, as it often does in the company of octogenarian island folk. Tio Manuel has dentures but hasn’t worn them much in the past decade as his gums have taken on teeth-like properties, enabling him to chew onions and bread and rending falsies unnecessary. Both John and Maria recently got new chompers (courtesy of the government of Canada, Long Live the King!) and suspected Tio Manuel’s dental situation might be improved with the use of Polygrip. Tio Manuel wasn’t too sure and worried if the glue would be strong enough. Paul offered his thoughts.

“Manuel, that stuff is super strong. In fact, you won’t be able to get the teeth off without the help of a goat to kick them out.”

Somehow he decided to try it anyway and he and John disappeared into the bathroom for twenty minutes, like they were smoking joints. Tio Manuel emerged with a prize-winning smile and markedly better enunciation. John said he was going to charge him for the use of the Polygraph – five bucks for the top and five bucks for the bottom.

Later, the subject of funerals came up and the Azoreans told us you could get a full funeral, coffin, burial, and the whole shebang for about 1,700 euro.

“1,700 euro?? That’s a fraction of what it costs in Canada!” Ana said. “What a deal!”

I added, “It’s like they say. The Azores is a great place to live…and an even better place to die.”

But hopefully, not for a long time.

Azores 2026 - Easing Gently Into Island Life and Shopping Locally

It was a good sleep.

We awoke to a sunny and cloudless morning in the house of Manuel Cabrinha in the town of Livramento on the island of Sao Miguel. Here, the windows remain open and the few bugs that do live on the island stay in their lanes, while the morning church bells alert you of the time each hour on the hour. Just count the bells to know when it is time to get up.

In Canada I often think of the breakfasts we enjoy in the Azores. They begin with a three minute walk to the Pingo Dolce neighbourhood grocery store to pick up freshly made buns, and my god are they good…and cheap. Six delicious fat buns cost just over one euro. You can also pick up thinly sliced ham, eggs, any of two dozen varieties of cheese, a bag of muesli, local milk, and of course, the sweet local mini bananas that blow those Costa Rican honkers right out of the jungle. Having a small grocery store located within a residential neighbourhood is a concept lost on Canadian city planners, as we’ve been conditioned to drive in our trucks to a Costco or Superstore, buy massive quantities of low quality food, then jam in all into chest freezers in our basements, to be extracted piece by piece over a period of months, or sometimes lost and forgotten in the crumb-covered bottom of the appliance and eventually transferred to a garbage bin. In Livramento, if you are a little less mobile, or short of time in the morning, you can have the bread man leave a daily plastic bag containing fresh buns hanging from your doorknob each morning before 7am. This is what Tio Manuel does. It’s a hell of a good system.

Although the Pingo Doce has most of what you would ever need to eat, we took Ana’s folks for a trip to the large Continental grocery store to pick up some food, then stopped for a look at the always mesmerizing ocean pools in Lagoa, then continued eastward to the Villa Franca marina where we had coffee and tosta mistas beneath the glorious sunshine and 22 degrees of warmth. By the time we returned to Tio Manuel’s house, more of the family had gathered, and we spent the rest of the day eating, drinking and goofing around. Francisco and Cidalia, close family friends, also joined the party and it was a far later night than expected.

Azores 2026 - Arrival in Sao Miguel

Thinking back, the only real good thing about having little kids was it got you to the front of the queue when boarding aircraft, under the “those passengers who need assistance or are traveling with small children” rule. Staff were generally nicer to passengers with kids too, surely out of a sense of pity seeing the immense amount of gear, dogged persistence, and saintly patience it took to travel with your yard apes.

Well, we discovered that traveling with old people works like that too - in our specific case, Ana’s parents. The airport provides free wheelchairs, lets you board first, and upon disembarking in the Azores, they even provided this amazing lift truck that rose up to the rear door, let us walk the oldies into a large cabin with seating and more wheelchairs, gently lowered us to the ground, then were driven VIP-style to the terminal entrance and whizzed right up to the front of the line. Then somehow our bags were the first to plop onto the belt and we were already out of the airport getting family hugs while the rest of the passengers were still queuing up for immigration. See, babies and old people can be cute and useful (at times).

Our evening flight dropped us into the Azores early Saturday morning so our first day was a full one. It’s been just over two years since we were here and each time we visit, the island of San Miguel feels more and more like our second home.

We had a lovely welcome breakfast spread with fresh cheese somebody’s neighbour made the day before, just-baked buns, mini-bananas, sweet orange cake, and grape jam Ana’s uncle Manuel made from the grapes hanging in his backyard. A bunch of the cousins and aunts and uncles were there, gathered around the table, and hit me with their working class, rapid fire Portuguese, making all the hours and weeks I practiced during the lead up to the trip feel pretty much useless as nobody could understand what I was saying and most of what they said, to my ears, sounded like a newly discovered language from the moons of Saturn. It was lovely to see them all again.

When there was a break in the action, Ana and I snuck out for a walk and made our way down to the nearby beach, which is about a ten minute stroll from the house. It was a glorious day, and I was wishing I had ditched the jeans and long-sleeved shirt for shorts and a tee. We stopped for a drink at the Sunset beach bar and bathed in the sunshine and unmistakenly European atmosphere – espresso served with biscuits and a small spoon, square napkins made from non-absorbing paper, great service, tight-fitting steel doors, finely dressed patrons and, best of all, no annoying 20% tip function on the debit machine – you just pay the price and are not required to determine the monetary worth of your server and experience.

After returning to the house, Ana started having a volcanic menopausal eruption in her body so I whisked her back to the beach, now in swimsuits, and we jumped in the salty cool waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Steam rose around her as her skin instantly boiled the seawater, drawing the attention of passing fishes and octopi. We spread our towels on the beautiful black sand and sat to admire rounds of arriving waves as locals bobbed in them.

Ana’s cousin Natercia, made a big lunch for us and we found ourselves around the table again eating and laughing, but now trying to fight off the drowsiness inflicted from the previous night’s rolling and squirming in the airplane seats. We somehow powered through and found enough energy to drive to the nearby town of Rosario for a festival. Azoreans have festivals for everything, usually religious based, but this one was particularly interesting. It was a festival of warm bread and tea. Yep, that’s it, just warm bread and tea. There were hundreds of people there and as the cauldrons of tea appeared, followed by the freshly made bread, a huge queue developed, snaking around the town square. By this time we could barely keep our eyes open so we decided to skip the warm bread and tea and return home to a warm bed and airy humid dreams.