Azores 2024 - Natercia’s Magnificent Signature, Azorean Pizza, Prawns in Caloura

The post-dinner conversation last night turned into an hours-long screaming match (as usual) and at one point Paulo thought the neighbour was going to call the cops. What was it about? Well, it was about Natercia’s name. After our experience at the bank with Ana’s surname I was curious if the people here had similar issues, as I know from experience that the Portuguese like to play fast and loose with names. In Canada it’s traditionally been quite simple – you get a first name, middle name, and last name. Everybody in the family has the same last name, which comes in quite handy for grouping and organization. “Hey, the Olsons are coming over tonight,” a neighbour might say, and the other neighbour he’s speaking to would know precisely who and how many would turn up. In recent times, this has changed with the many divorces and mixed families, plus the trend of women sometimes keeping their maiden names or hyphenating them with their husband’s surname. This has always struck me as odd, as I assume this privilege to be time fenced into one generation, two at most. For example, if Ana and I had gone double barreled and named our daughter Stella Borges-Olson, then she married a guy whose parents had done the same and named him Philip Hogsworth-Stroumboulopoulos, and the new couple wanted to keep up the tradition, then their daughter would be named Matilda Borges-Olson-Hogsworth- Stroumboulopoulos. And imagine what a tongue tangle it would be for their children if she married Thomas Aberdeen-Philippot-Sagittarious-Mikelstein. This system seems excessively wordy and impractical, but turns out I was wrong. Completely wrong.

Natercia’s full name is Natercia da Conceição Alves de Medeiros Cabral da Silva. At first I didn’t believe her, even after she told me it takes her about 90 seconds to sign her name. I asked to her to pull out her Portuguese citizenship card for proof, and sure enough, there it was, in glorious size two New Roman font. The name is a combination of given names and surnames of her mom and dad, plus her husband’s surname, then instead of using dashes they put a bunch of “da’s” and “de’s” between the names. It’s a classy name and has a nice flow and rhythm to it unlike the hyphenated monstrosities mentioned above.

Strangely though, her three siblings all got slightly different versions. Her older sisters Carmelia and Manuela had an “Oliviera” slipped in there which was her mom’s maiden name, and technically correct, but they dropped this for her older brother Rue, apparently due to some meddling from a godmother, which seems a common occurrence. Whenever things go wrong in Portuguese family, there is always a godmother involved. When Natercia came around, the godmother must not have caught wind of it, so her parents wanted to fix the error and put the “Oliviera” back in there, but they didn’t want Rue to feel singled out so they dropped it for her too, which meant she got a shorter name than she should have.

 

To further complicate matters, Tio Manuel’s original surname was Cabrinha, which means “little goat” and unsurprisingly drew some ridicule from the kids on the playground. So his parents changed the surname of the new babies they were blessed with to Medeiros, which was grandma’s surname. Strangely, Ana’s uncle Joe, who is Tio Manuel’s younger brother, was always called “Joe Cabrinha” despite his surname being Medeiros. See, it’s complicated.

 

After rigorously documenting this whole complicated naming system on a sheet of looseleaf, I ask Natercia why she doesn’t add “da Oliviera” and “de Cabrinha” to her name just to fill it out a bit. She’s not sure if I’m serious.

 

This morning, I take a long, long early solo walk through winding streets, down urban trails, and to the rocky coastline where I’m nearly blown over by the strong winds, then work my way back up through a series of neighbourhoods, and to the Pingo Doce where I pick up fresh bread for breakfast.

John and Maria join us for a visit to the nearby ceramic factory and we see the staff at work crafting clay pots and bowls, painting, baking, and selling. From here we drive down to one of our favourite places on the island – the natural pools of Rosario. The place is in chaos. The strong south wind is pushing massive waves that crash and foam violently, turning the black lava stone landscape white. On calm days, in the summer, this place is magical. I am hoping that we get some calm weather next week so I can get into the water. I will not leave here without an ocean swim.

We have lunch at home then Ana and I go back out to tour the Observatorio Vulcanologico e Geotermico dos Acores – the Volcano museum, a place we have driven by a hundred times and always wondered about. We arrive just in time for a tour and are pleasantly surprised with what we find – an entertaining scientist guide who takes us through a series of exhibits, videos, and experiments.

 

From here we drive east and worm our way down into the port of Caloura, which has a lovely seaside restaurant in the shadows of the nearby towering cliffs. We take a walk out to the end of the pier then return to the restaurant and share a plate of giant prawns bathed in garlic and oil. We hadn’t planned on coming here, but it seems on this island you can get in a car and drive in any direction and soon come across something interesting, unique, enjoyable, wonderful, or amazing.

 

We make one last stop at Charlena’s and share a medium pizza and drinks. The pizza is delicious. I’m excited to see the first item on their pizza menu was one that included chorizo and pineapple. I feel like taking a picture and sending it to our Italian exchange student Dom who has an inexplicable hatred for pineapple on pizza. But I think he and his Italian brethren are fighting a losing battle. 

Back at the house we have a quick chat with the folks. There seems to be some sort of religious discussion going on and Tio Manuel cracks Ana up with something he says, which she translates for me. He said he hasn’t been to church in a while and hasn’t noticed any significant reduction in his fortunes. I guess that settles the religion issue. I still give baby Jesus a little high five before going to bed.

Azores 2024 – Thermal Spas, Jurassic Gardens, Azorean Name Games

Wednesday is the best day for work. After Ana makes an appointment for next week with a lawyer to sort out some guardianship issues with her aunt, we gather up the Gang of Greys and drive over to the bank in Lagoa to see if we can get some things sorted on our account. When we bought the land here twenty years ago we opened a bank account with Tio Manuel and made him procurador which is sort of like a power of attorney, so that he could pay the annual taxes on our land for us. He is now 86 years old and still in damn fine shape, but it seems prudent to get a backup in place, so we’re adding Ana’s cousin Carmelia to the various documents.

Of course, it’s a mess. The Portuguese citizenship card that we tried to get a few days ago is going to require a code to be mailed to Canada, then we need to take that to the Portugal consulate in Toronto to pick up Ana’s new card. Unfortunately, that card is needed for pretty much any administrative government function so our helper at the bank is flummoxed, despite providing old passports, old citizenship cards, new passports and reams of other official documentation, the problems seems to be that Ana’s surname is “Borges” on some of them, and “Olson” on the others. We’re going to have Stella scan in our Portuguese marriage registration and email that to her to see if it makes a difference. All we are trying to do is get access to internet banking so we can pay the yearly taxes ourselves online and not have to bother the island folk.

 

Ana and I leave the three of them on a street corner to loiter around Lagoa and we head east for Furnas – the boiling, sulphury, steamy town towards the east end of the island, and closer to inferno than any other village. Furnas has been a tourist draw for over two hundred years, promising the gift of health from luxurious plunges into the warm, mineral-rich brown waters.

 

The road into Furnas takes you up high into the hills which, today, is above the cloud line so it’s a slow, curvy, and risky ride as the visibility is down to a few dozen metres. We drop out of the clouds as we are just entering Furnas valley and the view down into the town is beautiful. The town is busy with tourists but we manage to find a parking spot and pay the ten euro fee to get into the Terra Nostra gardens and park. Here, is a giant thermal pool with chocolate milk waters and a few hundred people soaking and lounging. We pass on the swim and instead wander the expansive gardens which are even larger and more impressive than the ones we visited in Ponta Delgada a few days ago. There are surprisingly few people there and the scenery is otherworldly; a bamboo forest, animal figures carved from trees and grown over with vines and moss, bubbling ponds, warm and winding streams, Jurassic trees, exotic flower gardens, singing frogs, chubby orange Koi cruising through channels.

 

We check out the restaurant in the attached Terra Nostra hotel, but after seeing servers wearing white gloves and buttoned-up ivory jackets, we veer left into the nearby 3 Bicas Snack Bar and have a lovely lunch and beers for eighteen euro.

 

After a bit of horsing around with online tickets, two-factor authentication, and phone apps (for some reason they do not accept payments on site anymore, so if you don’t have a phone you better find somewhere else to go), we finally get into the Poça da Dona Beija thermal spas. This place is hard to describe, but it feels like you’ve dropped into a jungle oasis. Four different pools, flowing over with steaming 39 degree water, all connected by a warm river running down what looks like an ancient cobbled riverbed, with flowers and shrubs and trees encircling the spas. There are a lot of people here – more than last time we visited, but it’s manageable and still somehow feels peaceful. We soak in the various pools for over an hour.

 

We take a different route back home, along the north coast, and after passing the two tea plantations on the island, stop at a miradour (viewpoint) to admire the ocean vistas and try not to get blown over the edge by the crazy winds. A little tourist gift shop has opened here since we last visited and I find an Azores shirt I like. We ask the man working there how much it is, bracing for his answer.

 

“Ten euro,” he says.

 

“Ten?” I ask Ana, surprised.

 

“Only ten?” she asks him.

 

“Yes, but it’s low season. In high season I crank the price up to twelve-fifty,” he said, both proud and slightly embarrassed at the same time.

 

“Why not charge twenty euro?” Ana asks. “People will pay it.”

 

“Oh no. I couldn’t do that,” he replies, now fully embarrassed with the thought of ripping people off.

 

And that, is exactly the reason tourists fall in love with this place. People here are decent. They are hospitable and willing to share their country and look to just make a living, not fleece visitors. I happily buy the shirt.

 Back at home base, the folks have cooked up a magnificent tuna dinner and Paulo Fernando, Natercia, and Leonor arrive at the house around 7:30 to join us. As expected, it turns into a late night with a lot of yelling, screaming, laughing, and drinking, and I make a remarkable discovery, which I will explain tomorrow.

Azores 2024 – Grey Parade, Cow Jam, Lando Calrissian

I’m happy to learn that this is still the land of the lost radio song. They have a surprising number of FM radio stations for such a small island, and most of them play English songs, but songs that have been mostly forgotten by the rest of the world. Maybe they get a great deal on them? Yesterday I heard that song “Hazard” by Richard Marx. This morning I heard “Sign Your Name” by Terence Trent D’Arby. I’m sure Roch Voisine and Wang Chung can’t be too far off. Listening to the radio here is like thrifting – once in a while you get a real gem, but it’s mainly junk.

We finally got our bed rigged up just right. I think the mattress on this bed is a vintage 60’s model that was a big step up from the duck feathers and straw they used to shove into burlap sacks to sleep on. She’s firm she is, but lava rock firm, and I haven’t been drinking enough to knock myself into a motionless stupor so my rolling around has been bruising my bony hips. Yesterday Ana’s mom found some extra blankets so now it’s much better and I’m back to rolling around pain-free.

 

After a big breakfast we gather up the Grey Parade and all five of us take off in the car to explore. We take the side roads up and across the middle of the island. The scenery is beautiful – rolling green hills, small stands of forest, stone fences, pasture lands, and cows – so many cows. At one point in the road we have to stop as a large village of cows is coming at us three astride, taking up the whole road. These classic black and white beauties pass by us gracefully, and acknowledge our presence with a slight nod and wink.

 

As we drive westward the road starts ascending and soon we are in thick cloud cover and in the Freguesia of Sete Cidades (Seven Cities, but I’ve only ever been able to count one or two of them). We stop at a viewpoint along with a bunch of tourists who are wandering down a path towards a barely visible aqueduct, getting soaked and nearly blown over from the crazy strong wind. At any moment I expect Lando Calrissian to come blasting out of the fog in his Twin Pod Cloud Car. When that doesn’t happen, we continue along the road first higher, then down a series of switchbacks into the valley of Sete Cidades which is famous for its two joined lakes; one green and one blue, at least on sunny days, which rarely happen here, so usually they are both grey, like they are today.

This is the most popular tourist destination on the island, but I’ve never really understood why. There’s just not that much here. It pretty, I suppose, and they have built more since the last time we were here – now there is a tourist restaurant alongside the shoreline of one of the lakes, plus a whole lineup of ATVs and side-by-sides which simply make me shudder with the thought of tourists ripping around on them up and down the streets and through the fields scaring the cream out of all the nice cows.

 

We stop for a coffee and a piss then move along to the Ponta da Ferraria thermal spa on the south-west and take a walk along the black lava stone pathways to look at the natural warm pool, which is currently a foamy froth of wind-swept surf, far too rough to risk a dip. I think Tio Manuel is really enjoying the day as he’s mentioned that it’s been decades since he’s visited some of these places. And the three of them in the back seat haven’t stopped talking once so they are definitely not getting bored.

Next stop is the town of Mosteiros, the western-most village on the island. It is famous for its series of natural ocean pools you can swim in, but today its more of a Perfect Storm scenario so there’s not much swimming going on. We go to the restaurant Brisa do Mar and have an excellent seafood lunch with beer and wine. This is the place we always lunch at in Mosteiros and it does not disappoint. Our server is the same lady who was working here when we first visited twenty years ago.

From here we drive north around the corner of the island then east and make a few stops to check out the vistas, and one at a small restaurant in Capelas where we sit on the outside patio, have coffee, and watch the endless sequence of 2000’s era music videos on the MTV playing on the large panel. Something about The Ketchup Song just makes me unbelievably happy. I need to learn that dance so I can break it out at the next family party.

 

As I sip my decaffeinated espresso, I can see that Ana and her mom are getting on each other’s nerves. They have this exchange.

 “Is there a bathroom here?” Maria asks.

 

“Mom, it’s a restaurant. Of course there’s a bathroom here,” Ana replies.

 

“What if I can’t find it?” Maria says, hinting that perhaps Ana could guide her in.

 

“God Mom, everybody in here speaks Portuguese! I’m sure they’d be happy to help,” Ana says, standing her ground.

 

“We’ll see,” Maria says as she purses her lips and squints her eyes, slowly nodding at Ana as she rises. “We’ll seeee....”

 

It is definitely time to go. We cruise back home, drop off the folks, then Ana and I finish up the day with a few chores, including ordering a bunch of food for John’s 80th birthday party which we’re hosting at Tio Manuel’s house this coming Sunday.

Azores 2024 – Baby Jesus, Botanical Gardens, and Local Sailors

Religion here in the islands is a big deal. Catholicism is woven into the fabric of everything – how they build, how they spend their time, how they talk. Every little town has its own roster of religious festivals and you can hit up a reli-fest every single weekend of the year if you don’t mind doing a bit of island driving. There are religious icons everywhere you look – carved into stone buildings, arranged into the cobblestoned sidewalks, depicted on tile murals on peoples’ homes, the white and black lavastone steeples of churches grasping for the sky, saintly air fresheners hanging from rear view mirrors in cars, rosaries and crosses hanging from peoples’ necks, and biblical street names carved into the classy stone markers on every corner. Tio Manuel has a baby Jesus mannequin on the bureau in the living room. I give him a little high five every morning when I come down to boil water and it makes me feel pretty good. I’m sure he’s been lying there for 50 years. In the bedroom Ana and I are using, there’s a glass globe with Joseph and Mary and a little kid who I assume is Jesus. I keep thinking a parrot on Joseph’s shoulder and a mini eye patch would be pretty funny but I don’t dare just in case I get busted and am not invited back.

The weather this morning is awful. The wind has shifted to the south which means our side of the island is now getting the shit-kicking. We decide it’s a good day for administration so we’re out the door by 9 and head to Ponta Delgada to get some documents required for the land we own here and to get Ana’s Portuguese citizenship card renewed. The citizenship place is at the Parque Atlantico shopping mall so after we’re done Ana hits the stores while I sit in a coffee shop with a book and read for an hour.

 Sometime after noon the rain stops and the sun comes out, completely transforming the day. We go to the Jose Do Canto Botanical Garden and I enjoy it so much it makes me wonder if I still am a hard drinking, hard partying, bad-assed, youthful, rebel motherfucker. Besides the thousands of exotic plants and trees there are a bunch of roosters, chickens, and cute little chicks running around that almost make me feel weepy. Before I completely surrender to old age we crawl to the top of the chapel situated at the edge of the property and get into the bell chamber and I chime the bells just to see if that starts some shit.

 

We drive down to the main Avenida in the city and go for lunch at a café in Portas do Mar – the cruise ship terminal. There’s a cruise ship in port – a big one – so we’re surprised the restaurants here are so quiet. Mind you, we are having lunch at 2:30 so that might explain it. We’re finding the prices here are still good, and some things are downright cheap. Our lunch is 30 euro, but that includes beers and huge meals. The odd time we go out for lunch in Canada these days has been costing us north of $60 after all the wretched taxes and tips. Restaurant prices here are definitely less than home, grocery store prices are the same or less, gas is 40% more, and admission fees (when they do charge admission) are still very low. Maybe things go up in the summer when most tourists visit, but to me it feels like things here really haven’t changed much in six years.

 

Beside the cruise ship terminal is a huge marina and we stop by the marina office to check out prices and find those too are still cheap. Residents can rent a yearly slip for about a thousand euro. For non-locals it’s over four grand, but that’s still cheap. The monthly non-local rate is only five hundred euro which seems like a bargain to me. While in the office, we meet one crew who are just leaving for Spain and had come from Martinique a few days before. It took them 26 days, which was about 8 days longer than normal due to weak winds. They expect the trip to Spain to take eight days and have no hesitation leaving in 45 kph winds and a boiling sea state. That seems scary as hell to me, but I think that once you’ve got some ocean experience under your belt you know what you and your boat can handle.

 

We also meet a Dutch sailor that sailed into Sao Miguel two and a half years ago with a busted engine and had the bowsprit of his boat knocked off when the coast guard was trying to tow him in and instead plowed his boat right into a concrete dock. After weeks of more frustration and disaster trying to sort everything out, he discovered he loved the island and decided to stay and get his residency. Marcel’s his name and I expect we just may run into him again and maybe get a tour of his boat and the inside scoop on living in a marina in Ponta Delgada.

 

During the drive back to Tio Manuel’s we pass several beaches, all of which have people out enjoying the late afternoon and swimming, playing volleyball, having drinks, or just sitting in the sand. Amazing the difference a few hours makes on the islands.

 We consume leftovers for dinner and are joined by Pedro, Carmelia, and Bella. And just when I am thinking the night is over, Bella takes us out to her boyfriend Carlos’s pizzeria restaurant for coffee and we get to meet his lovely mom who spins up the magic pizzas in the back room. We make a date to return Thursday for dinner.

Azores 2024 – Tia Ana, Exponential Portuguese Loudness, Crazy Cousins

It’s Easter Sunday. The clouds have parted and the sun is out after two days of rain. John and I go for a walk in the neighbourhood. The houses here are unique, often attached to each other, and despite most of them being very, very old, they look modern. Many have huge stone fences built around the properties and an incredible variety of trees popping up above them. One house has an enormous cactus sprouting up among a sprawling plantation of banana trees. They can grow nearly anything on this island. We stop at the corner grocery store (Pingo Doce) and I buy a beautiful loaf of warm artisan bread for one euro forty and a bunch of Portuguese buns for twenty-two cents each. Breakfast is served.

Ana had contacted her aunt Ana’s caregiver friend (Ana Margarida) and arranged for us to visit them at her home this morning. But first we drive to the Parque Atlantico, a shopping mall, and buy Tio Manuel a new microwave as his cacked out yesterday.

By 11:30 we are at Ana Margarida’s home and are welcomed in by her husband as the two Anas are still at church, but they arrive soon afterwards. Tia Ana’s had a rough go of things. Her and her husband Joe were never able to have children and she would have been a perfect mom. Her husband became an invalid and she was his caregiver for many years and rarely left the house. He passed away and she only had a few years of relative freedom until she started developing dementia and has gone downhill rapidly in the past couple of years. Ana and her aunt are very close so it’s been tough on her hearing about this decline, and now about to see it in person.

 

Tia Ana slowly, ever so slowly enters the room with the help of a walker and sees us all sitting there but doesn’t recognize anybody. John begins talking to his little sister and after a few minutes it finally clicks and she remembers and gives him a huge hug. Same thing happens with Ana’s mom and Ana. Everybody is crying. She doesn’t remember me until I start speaking to her in English then she remembers right away and hugs me. It’s heartbreaking to see her like this. We stayed with her at her house on previous visits to the Azores and got to know her so well. She deserved so much more in her life but her religious faith has enabled her to bear these crosses. And she’s lucky to have such a good friend in Ana Margarida who has been supporting her and taking care of her for many years.

Before leaving we make plans to see her again during the week and next weekend. Ana Margarida’s husband tells us that after an hour or so she probably won’t remember our visit. But that’s okay.

 

We get back to Tio Manuel’s house for 1pm and things are really happening. The cousins have been to Sete Cidades to pick up a massive amount of cooked food, and people are arriving rapidly – similar crew as Friday night, but this time the cousins’ partners are also here. The cupboard has been emptied of dishes, and chairs and tables have been improvised to accommodate everybody. It’s not just a lot of people in a small house - remember, this is a house full of Portuguese people, and even worse, Portuguese Island People who are even louder than the continental ones, and worse than that, Rapidly Deafening Old Portuguese Island People who can’t hear shit, so everybody screams all the louder to make sure they get their point across. The noise level is deafening.

The aluminum trays are uncovered to reveal the food – pork slices, beef slices, spiced chicken, potatoes, stewed octopus with octopus-marinated potatoes, Portuguese bread stuffing, and a bunch of other stuff I didn’t bother leaving any room on my plate for. Because it’s Easter there’s also chocolate eggs, chocolate rabbits, Ferrero Rocher chocolates, plus a bunch of desserts – flan, rice pudding, two kinds of cake, and a whipped cream jelly roll thing. We dive in and eat merrily.

 

As we’re eating, I think of something I want to ask Tio Manuel in Portuguese. I craft it over and over in my head until I’m sure it’s right. I know it will really impress all the cousins. So I wait for a break in the conversation to deliver my awesome question.

 

Here’s a tip if you plan on spending any significant periods of time with Portuguese people: don’t wait for a break in the conversation. You’ll be waiting a long time. You will probably be waiting forever because there’s never a break in the conversation. It doesn’t happen. In fact, there’s never just one conversation; there’re a whole bunch going on at the same time. Sometimes one of them will be having two simultaneous conversations, then those two people are also having multiple conversations and this results in exponential loudness and confusion. You know how cell phone signals are everywhere, bouncing from phone to tower to phone, through people, buildings, and animals, and these millions of signals somehow miraculously make it to the right phone and everybody understands each other? That’s what Portuguese parties are like, but instead of silent radio signals it’s loud voices. I’ve thought about this a lot, and I think the Portuguese all inherited the same genetic mutation where they can breathe through their ears, because they never seem to stop for a breath.

 

Anyway, Ana ends up asking Tio Manuel the exact same question I was going to ask so I give up after that and instead just focus on eating and drinking as much as possible.

 

At some point I realize that cousin Tony had disappeared with all the kids and I find out he’s taken them over to the park to play soccer. So Ana, her cousin Carmelia, and I walk over to see what’s going on, and to enjoy the beautiful sunshine that’s flooding the island. 

 

We find them and join in for a rollicking game of Keep-Up-The-Volleyball with all the junior cousins and some other neighbourhood kids they picked up along the way. I manage to keep my Easter dinner down where it belongs despite the jumping and stretching and am feeling a lot better than I would have collapsing on the couch and watching the Portuguese Ten Commandments on tv.

 

We return to the house for more desserts and drinking and eventually the crowd slowly starts thinning out. Around 9:30 the older contingent started comparing the back cremes they use for the aches and pains, then all of a sudden everybody’s whipping off clothes showing off scabs, rashes, discolorations, and all manner of skin abnormalities and I’m sitting there pie-eyed thinking, Goddamn everybody’s getting old – this sure as shit never used to happen around here. By 10pm only Paulo and Natercia are left and Natercia’s on a roll. We’ve been playing music real loud on the portable speaker and dancing and laughing, and Tio Manuel signals it’s time for everybody to leave when he flicks on the tv and tunes it into the Lisbon Weather Channel. He even turns up the volume, but it can’t overpower the speaker so we ignore the signal and carry on and Natercia even gets him dancing, sort of, for a brief moment.

 

I must tell you about Natercia. She’s crazy. In the best way possible. In my family, on the Olson side, we have Cousin Nicole who’s crazy and awesome. Natercia is the Azorean version of Nicole. And Nicole is the Canadian version of Natercia. If I ever managed to get the two of them together, I think the universe would experience a cataclysmic event, and it would totally kick ass. And Natercia’s husband Paulo Fernando is the chillest dude imaginable…just like Nicole’s beau Mark.

 

Natercia tells a story about her last trip to Canada, which was a long time ago, but it comes out fresh. It’s delivered in rapid fire Portuguese and animated pantomime and takes about 40 minutes. I can pick out bits and pieces, and there’s parts there about somebody trying to buy her fancy shoes at the airport for two hundred bucks, and some other part where she slipped on ice and faceplanted at Walmart, then she switches to English to explain the valuable items she brought home to the Azores from Canada – eighty cakes of Irish Spring soap, fourteen blocks of marble cheese, four enormous bottles of Sam’s Club pickles, and two jars of multi-coloured jalapeno rings. She’s crazy.

Azores 2024 - A Triumphant Return to My Village

The time difference is just three hours but it still messes you up a bit. We went to bed last night around 10 and didn’t have any cheater naps during the day, and woke up at 8am feeling reset and ready to go.

 

Remember that “death row” dinner I wrote about yesterday? Well today I have my first of many death row breakfasts. Breakfasts in the Azores are simple and they are the greatest. After picking up fresh warm buns from the local grocery store you slice one open, spread some butter made from the milk of happy cows, then put in a slice of ham and piece of fresh cheese, also made from the milk of happy cows. You also have yourself one or two mini bananas, pulled from one of the banana trees in your backyard or your neighbour’s backyard. You can accompany that with hot coffee, or perhaps a tall glass of milk, made from – you guessed it – happy cows.

 

It is again rainy, cloudy, and windy and the winter season is not quite ready to fully release its hold on the island, so we grab John and Maria and go for a car ride. First stop is the farmer’s market downtown where we pick up a bunch of vegetables then head upstairs to the fish market, where there’s only one stall still open. The fishmonger had a cross section of a huge tuna and slices off a quarter of it then places the long and deep red slab on the chopping block. He slides his blade slowly up the slab until we say stop and he cuts there. He weighs it and tells us it will be seventeen euro, and there’s likely two kilos there. He cuts them up into steaks and puts them in a bag with ice. Ana passes him a twenty, which he receives with his scaly and bloody hands then offers to throw in four calvalhos (sort of like mackeral…they might actually be mackeral) to bring the total up to an even twenty euro. I expect every customer evens up to avoid a pile of fishy euro coin in the pocket.

 

It's been at least two hours since we’ve eaten so we stop at a waterfront café on the Avenida for a light snack. The Pink Queen of Bifana, as she calls herself, rewards us with four tall milky coffees (called galao) and pork sandwiches and we sit there for a good long while envying our own current situation in life. To me, not a thing has changed since we were last here six years ago. There are still just a handful of tourists walking around and I recognize many of the stores.

 

We get back in the car and drive west through the rest of Ponta Delgada and up the coast to Feteiras so we can check on our property. We bought a building lot here nearly twenty years ago so you could say this is my home village, and I have Ana take a photo of me in front of the FETEIRAS sign to celebrate my homecoming. Our original plan was to buy the lot then in twenty years after Feteiras had developed and was full of trendy restaurants, cool bars, and diversions of all types, we’d build a house. Well, Feteiras hasn’t changed at all in twenty years. The only difference is that our lot is the only one remaining empty of the six that were sold by the previous owner of the land.

 

Last time we were here the lot was overgrown with bamboo and there were some stalks of it reaching up and over the neighbouring houses. Sometime in the interim, the village must have sent some of their boys down with machetes and chainsaws and they cleaned it up completely. That was nice of them. We admire our lot for a while then drive down the impossibly steep road nearby to the coast. Here, we are surprised to see a number of vehicles and tourists taking selfies over the punishingly rough waters and the black volcanic landscape. There used to be a pool here many years before but it had been completely destroyed during one particularly nasty storm. That was the other thing we had hoped may have developed over the years, but nope. Sowe’re not sure what we’re going to do with the land. The ocean views are simply stunning from here and it could be a magnificent place. But we don’t plan on ever living here full time, we don’t love the town, and we certainly don’t want the hassle of managing a rental property. I dream that the extended periods of time we do spend here on the future could instead be on our sailboat in the marina, which offer 360 degree ocean views and walking access to everything. Of course, we’d need to actually sail the boat here, but that’s a larger discussion. So we may sell the land. We’ll see.

 

We drive back towards Ponta Delgada then turn north and cross the ten kilometres across the island to Ribera Grande on the north shore which is being pounded by huge waves and a watery gale from the north. Ana has an address of a care facility where we think her aunt Ana is at. We find it in the inner recesses of Ribera Grande and wander around inside but can’t find her. One of the workers makes a call for us and confirms she is living in their other facility in a different town. Because it’s getting on in the day we decide to abandon the plan and come back in a day or two.

 

On the way home we stop at the supermarket and pick up some food. I stand mesmerized in the wine aisle and am faced with a tough decision. The five litre boxes of wine come in many varieties and prices. I go with the high roller option and grab a box for eleven euro instead of the cheap-assed six euro plonk. I will be told later by Paul that this wine is good for only two things: cooking Wednesday food or cleaning power tools. He underestimates the simplicity of my palate.

 

We have a quiet dinner of leftovers and my freshly procured Cardboardeax. Delicious. Natercia arrives some while later and entertains us with an hour of stories then she is off like a flash and I am out like a light.