Horta, Faial, Azores
Today we were scheduled to visit the island of Flores, one of the two islands in the western group of the Azores. The weather report was for extremely high winds and seas in that area of the archipelago and the officials at Flores finally decided to close the port. After discussing our options, we decided to keep National Geographic Explorer alongside at Horta and take the local ferry across the Faial Channel to the nearby island of Pico. Other options were precluded by the fact that the Portuguese navy was carrying on maneuvers at the island of Graciosa and that other ships were offloading cargo in the other small ports at other nearby islands.
After a lively passage across the shallow waters of the canal, we reached the village of Magdalena on the west end of Pico. There we boarded our buses and drove along the south coast of the island in the pouring rain to the village of Lages do Pico. This was an important whaling port in the days of shore-based whaling in the Azores and we were able to visit the excellent whaling museum there. We were shown two beautiful canoas baleeiras, the whaling boats used by the Azoreans in the pursuit of sperm whales, as well as many other implements of whaling and an excellent scrimshaw exhibit. On our way back to Magdalena we visited the Pico Wine Cooperative where we were able to see the extensive mazes of rock walls which have been built to protect the grape vines from exactly the kind of blustery weather that we were experiencing on our excursion. We visited the bottling plant and sampled some of the local vintages before returning once again across the rolling seas of the channel and back to National Geographic Explorer in the midst of a torrential downpour.
Energized by our exposure to the elements, we were nevertheless happy to be back once again in our dry warm ship and settled in once again as we began our three day passage to the Isles of Scilly.
