To The Azores - Part 4 - São Miguel

Walk Through Punta Delgada:

In Angra (on Terceira) all the buildings were different colors. All bright pastels and colored metal work. Here on São Miguel, all of the buildings are white plaster with black volcanic stone borders. The borders are often done with raw sharp stone. The chapels of the holy spirit are likewise less colorful, all being done in the same white and black. It is going to make it harder to find them.

Off the main square was this fabulous church where in is an important shrine to christ. We went inside to sit and look and the gold gilt and statuary were very impressive. Certainly shows why, if you are a pirate, you want to loot the church first.

Sidewalks -

The sidewalks and squares are a study in the artful use of black and white 10cm stones. The black are local volcanic and the white are imported limestone (usually imported as ship ballast, I believe). At least in the historic districts they are placed in pleasant geometric patterns that differ from street to street. I include a sample study in the pictures below. The roads are often paved just in black (and larger) stone. The main driveway out in front of our hotel in Ponta Delgada was being re-done while we were there and we got to watch the process over a week's time. It is not a fast process. The foundation is prepared, the stones are selected, and then gently hammered into place. Later other workers go back and fill in the sides with sand and then wash off the entire thing. They were going to be working on the patterned little stones for the accompanying sidewalk, but we left before I could observe this.

Trail of 4 electric generators (4 light makers?)

Funny name for a hike down a river valley with a great waterfall. In the early 1900s, however, a group got together to build a hydroelectric generation facility down this valley. At the top of the island is a lake that was dammed a little to provide some continuous water flow. Then where the road crosses the valley (perhaps halfway down and where the hike started) is a little diversion dam that sends the water off down a canal to a large storage pound that dumps into at least one, perhaps 2 large (1 meter) diameter iron pipes. Each section of pipe is around 4 meters long and they snake way down the steep valley. The trail also goes quickly down the steep trail with big steps. Down at the bottom you find large ruins to which the big pipe runs. The pipe enters the building and then splits to a few smallish (2 meter) turbine generators. The building hasn’t been used in a long time. There is no roof and there are large trees growing inside and up the walls. I was trying to calculate the amount of pressure they were operating under. Easier to do in Metric (of course). I think the holding pools was something like… 100 meters up the cliff. That makes the pressure around 10 bar (10 atmospheres). Seems like that could press pretty hard, You could probably use it to run a piston, but these generators didn’t seem to be piston based. I think they were sort of turbines and the water spun an integrated wheel. I took some pretty good pictures of the setup so hopefully we can figure this out later.

Diversion Dam at Top of hike

Pipe carrying water inside buiding

This valley had lots of tall trees and many different verdant green plants, all of which turned out to be exotics. The trail was pretty well maintained though the steps were a bit high in some places and the downhill going was very slow for a bunch of old people with old people knees. Everyone either had brought trekking poles or borrowed them from someone.

After the next section of trail we came to another abandoned generation facility that was at the bottom of a very nice waterfall. Now that I come to think of it, how in the hell did they get all of that machinery down there. There were not any obvious roads leading down to the generation machines and buildings. Such machines would have required a lot of maintenance and attention. In fact, that is probably why they were abandoned in place, they got too expensive to repair and so some repair to something, during some earthquake or storm or flood, didn’t get fixed and it was all downhill from there.

At around the 2.5K distance we came to a crossing of the main stream/river. It was at a rocky place where the river was relatively narrow, but the water was running pretty rapid and deep through the cut. Our guide, wanted us to jump across the narrow point, from rock to rock. He demonstrated with a strong 35 year old man jump. The next person was a 70 year old woman and she explained to him that she didn’t jump. Good for her. I was at the end of the line and I had already decided that I certainly couldn’t make that jump. You miss and/or slip and things could have gotten very bad very quickly. I had determined that I could cross in the wider spot upstream about 20 feet. I would surely get my socks wet but I figured I could live with that.

Our guide came to a similar decision, though he thought he could get people to rock hop a little somewhere between the place I was eyeing and the place he jumped. He handed a person from one rock to another and then they walked through shallowish water to the other side. He got the first person across alive so that looked good. Some people had more trouble than others, as you might guess.

When it was our turn, Paige decided to go through the wide part and I tried the rocks where other people had crossed only I declined help. I figured I could use my sticks once I saw where other people had been walking. Is that cheating?

We all got across if not dry footed then at least dry butted, though I will say that it seemed like a bit of a risk trying to get a bunch of oldish persons across something like that. What was the alternative? Wet feet, or climbing back to the top...

At the end of the hike we followed the big pipe down the road into town were it vector off, presumably to the last generator building. We didn't see that one, maybe it isn't there anymore. A bunch of wet people ended up back at the bus.  We ended up canceling our last little visit (to a famous pastry shop) because it was POURING down rain and the people on the front of the bus just didn't want to get off.  I going to write a section of this blog on People Dynamics at which time we will discuss the Front of but busser vs the back of the bussers. I believe it may be some trait left over in us from highschool.

We ended up going back to the hotel a bit early and a bit damp. Here we were once again presented with a problem that followed us on the entire trip. How do you get your wet clothes dry in a rainy high humidity place? Overnight hanging in the shower just doesn't quite do it.

want more information about the generators and the trail? Try This Nice Video

Growing Pineapple -

It is very expensive to grow Pineapple in the Azores. They have to be grown inside a greenhouse and the traditional method of growing takes 2 years to get a fruit. To top it off, the variety of pineapple that they grow is about a half the size of the hawaiian variety you are used to seeing at the grocery stores in the United States. However, they have been doing it this way for a couple of hundred years and they are currently getting money from the EU to keep up historic traditions. It probably also helps with the tourist trade.

So, how do they do it? We visited a small Pineapple plantation and we got a technology briefing on the entire thing. The green houses are not tall. Maybe 6 feet. They have to be short to keep them out of the wind as much as possible. The greenhouse buildings themselves are old and have 1 foot square glass panels as the light admitting covering. It is also true that during the height of the summer, the temperature inside the greenhouse would be much too hot if the total sun was allowed in. They limit the sun by painting the window panes with whitewash. This white wash is mainly calcium carbonate mixed in water. After the summer is over, they let in more sun by slowly rinsing the whitewash off the windows (or perhaps, by allowing it to wash off naturally by the rain). The rain water falls off the roof into troughs that run down the sides of the greenhouse and then by underground pipes to holding tanks so they can recycle the water and the whitewash. Some of the whitewash gets into the water that is used to cultivate the pineapples but this is also good as this raises the PH of the soil which is necessary for the Pineapples to survive.

smoke pots

Water holding tank amidst low green houses

 

Each glass house has around 600 plants and all of the plants in any given greenhouse structure are the same age. It was discovered early in the experimentation with Pineapples on the islands that stressing the Pineapple plants with smoke (by lighting controlled fires in cans inside the glasshouses) will force the plants to flower (and so, to fruit). This lets the farmer force an entire population to flower at the same time so he can plan when the fruit is going to be harvestable on a house by house basis.

The plantation that we went to was one of the oldest on the island and the fruit that they produce is too expensive to sell on the market. They turn it into Pineapple liquor. I guess there are other farms that make enough fruit to sell it because we got it at the market and had it for breakfast at our buffet a couple of times. We had thought we were going to get some sort of Pineapple samples at the gift shop but instead we got liquor samples. It was a very nice gift shop, however, so I think we also got some fun earrings. 

Hiking the North Coast -

We did a nice walk along the cliffs on the North Coast of the island ending up in the town of Capelas (pronounced: Ca-pel-ash.). This town name is one with that ‘sh’ sound at the end that is so typical of the difference between Spanish and Portuguese. It throws me a bit because I have not internalized how to equate the sound of the word with the spelling (like, on the highway signs). (I am sure that if I had studied Portuguese in High School instead of Spanish, I would be having the opposite problem) This town is just on the other side of the island from Ponta Delgada and is in the same……. Municipality? County?

We hiked along the cliffs for about 3 miles. The ocean was not very rough today and the tide was low. We saw many people either out diving or on the rocks prying things off of the lava stone. Our guide told us that both sets of people were probably collection limpets. Limpets are a shellfish that grows affixed to a stone in the ocean and are eaten by the Azoreans as a sort of delicacy in much the same way Americans might eat mussels. We had a plate of them during our dinner out in Angra and they were very tasty. Our guide pointed out that this wasn’t the season for gathering limpets so all of the people we saw were doing it illegally. One way to cook limpets is to poach them. So one would be having poached poached limpets.

In the middle of our hike we went to a famous place named after a religious dead guy (buraco de São Pedro). It was a crater in a headland formed by erosion with sea water crashing into the interior. There was a good view of Capelas from there.

The town of Capelas was built on the cliffs and the cliffs have been wearing down and encroaching on the century old houses. These days all of the houses that are closest to the water have been abandoned, though they still stand there becoming ready to fall into the sea. I guess sooner or later they will take the houses away, perhaps make a nice park between the road and the cliffs.

 

Our guide called our attention to the religious tiles that are over many of the doors of the homes in the town. They are indicators of the various saints and magical creatures that the owners of the home are especially fond of. They certainly add a bit of color and art to the neighborhood.

Capelas, by the way, means ‘cathedral’. The rocks of the cliff, when viewed from the sea, look like a big church, and thus the name. From our lunch spot, we could also see the rock formation that is named after an elephant. Can you see why?

After lunch near the local Whaling memorial (they had big winch and ramp for getting the sperm whale out of the ocean) we went a bit uphill and stopped at a fun private museum run by a couple of retired school teachers. It was large warehouse like structure that had been very nicely structured into little shop-like rooms where in were displayed artifacts from the island for different trades and occupations. Shoe making, printing presses, traditional art forms, farming, telephony. Etc. Sort of a hoarder and an interior decorators delightful fusion. We were given a gift of a little framed flower that was hand made from fish scales. (see pictures).