The Azores

‘One of my most special moments on Pico was being here alone, with my eyes closed, listening to Sarah Brightman at full volume.’

So said Quim, my climbing guide, during one of our reflective pauses while ascending a volcano. He was reflecting; I was weeping. My leg muscles were wobbly, my chest screaming, ‘Why did you ever smoke?’ and nausea came in waves while I smiled and avoided any kind of speech that might further drain my lungs.

Quim’s confession sounds a bit odd, but you have to factor in his home: the dot-sized island of Pico – basically a  volcano and a few cliffs – smack bang in the middle of the Azores. Isolated in the eastern Atlantic, 1,500km from Lisbon, this Portuguese archipelago has a history of economic self-sufficiency (or at least subsistence) and cultural independence. Quim was not being cheesy and unfashionable; he was just being Azorean.

A painful ascent

My painful ascent of Pico shouldn’t have been a surprise. At 2,351 metres it’s the highest mountain on Portuguese territory and the highest mountain to rise directly from the sea in all of Europe – the  volcano, formed 300,000 years ago (it last erupted in 1718), is in fact the top of a section of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Though a road takes you almost halfway up and you only climb the 5km stretch from Cabeço das Cabras at 1,200 metres  to the summit, it’s the steepest bit, and the zigzagging path is a kind of staircase made from spiky basalt cinders with each step just that little bit too high for a normal, human-sized stride. While I wheezed my way upward, through the clouds, and past a series of craters, humming ‘Starship Trooper’, Quim leapt onward like a billy goat.

But, thanks to his encouragement, we made it to the very top of the tiny cone that marks the summit, still daubed with snow in early April. Wafts of steam were drifting out of a vent, but the morning’s cloud had cleared and we had a view over the huge ocean, its waves crashing against a coast sprinkled with tiny whitewashed villages, and of the neighbouring islands of São Jorge and Faial. On the coast facing the latter were Pico’s famous (well, famous to Azoreans) vineyards, where the delicious Lajido sherry-like wine is nurtured in pens built from black volcanic bricks that keep the heat in and the wind out. Given a World Heritage listing in 2004, they are one of the main reasons people are beginning to hear about, and explore, the Azores.

From whale hunting to whalewatching

But an even greater draw, and the one that had made my trip already worthwhile, is the whalewatching.

I’d seen baleen whales (those with hair-like mouth plates that filter out krill, zooplankton and small fish) in a few places before, but off the south coast of Pico you can ride out in small boats to see the magnificent sperm whale – which has teeth, all the historical heft (from Jonah to ‘Moby Dick’) and, of course, that massive head. Serge Viallelle, a French sailor who has been running whalewatching trips out of the small coastal town of Lajes since 1991, said his fascination with this beast was due to its ‘not being exactly a whale, but not like any other animal either. It dives so deep to fight with the giant squid, looks so unusual and is still a mystery to us.’

The twist of the whalewatching tourism business is that Pico was once a hub for whale hunting. Right up until the mid-1980s local farmers would, when given a signal from one of the special high-rise lookouts, put down their hoes and scramble aboard a long, canoe-like boat armed with hand-launched harpoons. On finding the whale they would throw their harpoons till the animal panicked and dived and then wait for it to emerge, only to be assaulted again – and again, and again – until it bled to death. As it usually floats when dead, the sperm whale was ideal for this primitive sort of hunting: while the rowers made their way home, a motor launch could come out to collect the whale and tow it to the onshore factories where its carcass gave from 15 to 40 tonnes of blubber and oil.

Aboard Serge’s powerful speedboat, I was taken 5km offshore to see these now protected beauties. On the way out, we saw shy striped dolphins, as well as a tern and some Cory’s shearwaters – agile seabirds I’d already got to know because of their raucous nocturnal cackling in the sky above my hotel in Lajes. Then we spotted a couple of young whales, which dived and flashed us their tails. We sailed alongside two large adults, probably males, as they slinked along the surface and blew – sperm whales blow sideways, making them easy to recognise. Next was a mother and a baby. ‘Look, a breast-feeding young sperm whale,’ shouted the guide. It sounded weird to my ears, and had me imagining a sister species: the sperm-feeding breast whale, an even more exotic animal, bulbous and rather rude.

I’d first read of the Azores  while researching Charles Darwin. He didn’t say much but he would have been struck by the black beaches and the contrasting deep green interior of the islands. The vegetation on Pico is mainly an endemic plant called erica azorica, which is low-slung and sturdy, having evolved to withstand the brunt of the winds and the corrosiveness of sea salt.

São Miguel – the 'other' island

The other island I visited – and which you more or less have to as it’s where most international jets arrive – is São Miguel. Here I indulged in non-energetic activities, from tea-tasting to floating in a hot pool at a botanical park called Terra Nostra, to dining out. I tried the island’s cozida, or stew, a huge bin-lid of meats and vegetables traditionally cooked for six hours underground, using geothermal heat. I managed to eat a full plate and a bit more, and polish off a bottle of Pico’s finest wine as well as a glass of aguardente or firewater. On São Miguel I squeezed in a few siestas too – my hotel, in the cove of Caloura had peace-imparting views of a craggy headland. What’s nicer, on a lonely island, than sitting on a balcony with a glass of Lajido, watching the surf – wild some days, mellow on others – as the sun goes down?

Weather and when to go

The Azores are not very far south, and have remained off the mass-tourism map because they don’t offer the reliable sunshine of the Canaries; but they are warmer and more pleasant than our own island, and are blessed year-round with the humid caress of the Gulf Stream. I’m actually glad Darwin didn’t write very much about them – there’s nothing like a cerebral dead celeb for marketing a place – and that the megafirms selling cheap packages haven’t caught up with Sarah Brightman yet. But if you’re after a good-value island break in the shoulder seasons of May-June or September-October – in mid-summer some places get rammed – you could do worse.

A couple of years ago, a well-travelled winemaker in the famous Douro Valley told me: ‘You Brits have got it all wrong, you go to boring, man-made Madeira, but we go to the Azores, which are unspoilt, authentic and more beautiful.’ So do as the Portuguese and not as your neighbours do – head west, out into the ocean, and get away from it, and us, all.

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