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The Azores Islands: their Relationship to Atlantis

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Corissa
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« Reply #45 on: July 29, 2012, 08:59:32 pm »

Splendid Isolation In the Azores
By BARBARA PAULSEN; BARBARA PAULSEN, an editor of ''Special Report: On Health,'' recently spent a year living in the Azores.
Published: Sunday, April 2, 1989

Correction Appended

THE Azores are a tangle of myths, a tableau vivant of intersecting stories of creation and destruction. Tales of the lost remains of Atlantis, sea monsters attacking fishing towns, rich kingdoms destroyed by volcanic fire - these are some of the stories repeated by young and old alike. These nine Atlantic islands two-thirds of the way from New York to Lisbon were uninhabited by man or animal, lingering in the aftermath of volcanic flux, when the Portuguese colonized them in the 15th century.

Over the years, eruptions and earth tremors have imparted a fervent religiosity and fierceness of character to the Azoreans. Pious religious festivals and rituals - like the one in which groups of chanting men, called Romeiros, make Lenten pilgrimages on foot - are still vital markers of the seasons.

I arrived in the Azores in August, during the height of their tourist season. Or so I was told. As my companion and I strolled the black-and-white mosaic sidewalks lining Ponta Delgada's harbor, it was a little hard to believe. Where were all the foreigners? All around me I saw strong-boned, tanned Portuguese faces and heard the signature sh-sh-ing that makes Portuguese so seductive to the ear. The tourists, I soon realized, were Portuguese too, either from the mainland or from the United States and Canada returning to rediscover their homeland.
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Corissa
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« Reply #46 on: July 29, 2012, 08:59:48 pm »

My friend Teo was no exception. A native of the Azores' largest and most populated island, Sao Miguel, he immigrated to the United States when he was 9. Now he was returning to spend a year teaching, and I was joining him, giving in to a girlhood fancy to live in a foreign country. After days of driving cobblestone roads ringing the island's cliffy coast, winding through pastel-colored villages and endless thickets of hydrangeas, I was intoxicated with the idea of spending a year in the Azores.

We explored villages where fishmongers balanced baskets of fish from poles hoisted over their shoulders. Women washed clothes in communal areas and hung them on bushes to dry. On the western side of Sao Miguel we discovered Sete Cidades, a village nestled inside a collapsed volcano on the shores of two lakes, one green, one blue. Horses and donkey carts are still the main mode of transportation. It was in the pungent atmosphere of village taverns carpeted with cigarette butts, where wrinkled men with twinkling eyes congregated for their morning and evening stories, espresso and brandies, that I witnessed Azorean feistiness at its best. Their passion - over the latest soccer match or the latest slight from Lisbon - boiled over like molten lava.

Evidence of the Azores' volcanic legacy is everywhere. Black honeycombed lava stone is the common denominator of all dwellings, from Baroque churches and manor houses to the humblest cottage. The natural beauty bequeathed by volcanic fury is even more noticeable. Lava-rich soil nourishes a patchwork of camellias, lilies, ferns, azaleas and hydrangeas, zig-zagged with lava rock walls. Sao Miguel's Lagoa do Fogo (lake of fire) was formed at the bottom of an eroded volcano. The place is so tranquil that at first it didn't occur to me to follow a path down the lake's mossy sides to enjoy the profane pleasures of swimming in its turquoise waters.
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Corissa
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« Reply #47 on: July 29, 2012, 09:00:04 pm »

Nowhere did I sense the islands' volcanic origins more tangibly than in Sao Miguel's valley of Furnas, a repository of natural cauldrons of boiling water and bubbling mud. A humid mineral scent hung in the air. Next to a cold water lake, the earth around cooking pits filled with cozida, a steamed dish of sausages, meats and vegetables, hissed to alleviate the heat below. Not having brought our own food, we ordered lunch from Hotel Terra Nostra, the town's Art Deco hotel. While waiting, we soaked in the warm water of a swimming pool surrounded by a botanical garden.

It turns out we had come to the Azores at a perfect moment for discovery. I had expected the third world (the Azores are one of the poorest regions in the European Economic Community). Instead I found a European culture that seemed to have gotten stuck in the 19th century, then suddenly come alive a decade ago. When the Azores became an autonomous region of Portugal in 1976, badly needed subsidies began trickling in. Things have changed just enough to afford most of the comforts of home, but not enough to have significantly altered a traditional way of life. What this means for travelers is that this secluded cluster of islands has come of age in terms of airport and accommodations, but not so much so that the pleasures of figuring the place out for oneself are bypassed.

The Portuguese call it ter jeito - acquiring a knack for uncovering what's beneath the surface.
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Corissa
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« Reply #48 on: July 29, 2012, 09:00:28 pm »

Although tourism is growing (up 35 percent from 1982 to 1986, according to Portuguese tourism officials), luxurious is still a word to describe the islands' vegetation, not their hotels. What you remember most are the people you meet as you explore. The man driving an ox cart to his fields may not completely share your effusiveness over the flowers spilling onto the roads. But he will go out of his way to talk to you, to tell of a hot springs waterfall only locals know about or invite you to sample his wife's cornbread. Azorean hospitality grows out of the islands' rhythm: unhurried, always focused on the person or task at hand.

It was an Azorean friend who gave me my first lesson in ter jeito one windy September afternoon when she had a craving for caldeirada, a hearty fish stew. With about a million square miles of exclusive fishing zone surrounding us, we were optimistic fresh fish could be procured. But no. ''The sea was not good to us today,'' shrugged the fisherman at Porto Formoso, a small beach on Sao Miguel's northern coast.
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Corissa
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« Reply #49 on: July 29, 2012, 09:00:54 pm »

I was ready to give up but my friend displayed her Azorean tenacity. We marched down the ramp leading to the small fishing harbor, where she interrogated a group of fishermen untangling lines. Still no fish. We advanced toward a second group, who called back to the first group. Well, yes, they had caught one fish. In a few minutes, each of the boats had provided their one fish. With three ample bream at hand, we had to turn down a lobster. And then the fishermen turned down our attempts to pay.

Island hopping is another example of the necessity of ter jeito. The Azores stretch from east to west in a 400-mile crescent: Sao Miguel and Santa Maria in the southeast, Terceira, Pico, Faial, Sao Jorge and Graciosa in the center, and Flores and Corvo in the northwest. The most isolated islands in the Atlantic, the Azores are also isolated from each other. When I first flew over the archipelago, each island seemed to be floating, unanchored, at sea.

So to hop, you fly. Just the right combination of flights and boats must be orchestrated to tour the islands conveniently and economically. But rampant island rivalry means that often you'll be discouraged from venturing to the other islands. Don't listen. Well-meaning islanders will also tell you that something that strikes you as fun, like walking around the rim of a volcanic cone, bathing under a hot-springs waterfall at midnight or finding a path to that secluded beach 100 feet below, is not a good idea or ''very complicated.'' That usually means only that hard-working Azoreans have no interest in doing it. You must be persistent.
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Corissa
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« Reply #50 on: July 29, 2012, 09:01:10 pm »

Azoreans' hands are seldom idle, which accounts for the abundance of crafts in shops like Casa Regional da Ilha Verde in Ponta Delgada or King's Acre in Lombega, Faial. Locals love knickknacks, made of everything from fish scales to fig pith, but handmade lace and rough-hewn pottery - are the real treasures. Intricate bedspreads and tablecloths can run as much as $260 (at 154 escudos to the dollar), but the work is exquisite.

The pottery - volcanic clay glazed in crisp whites and blues - is more reasonable; a tea set goes for $6.50. The craft stores make shopping easy, but shopping is best used as a way of further exploring the islands. In Vila Franca do Campo, you can walk the narrow street that hugs the coast and discover women crouched in doorways crocheting tablecloths or men molding clay and letting it dry on the seawall. Only if you ask will one of the men take you down a path to a stone cottage filled with bowls, jugs and planters. Or in the village of Lagoa, five miles from Ponta Delgada, you can order garden statues or a whole set of painted dishes at the tiny tile-coated pottery factory across the street from the fishing harbor. Often the most inspired work comes from unexpected sources: I found one of my favorite buys - a painted wooden cow and baby calf - on display outside the local jail.

Not all of the islands' pleasures are difficult to come by, of course. It's dead simple to book a room at the Estalagem de Santa Cruz, an inn built into a 16th-century fort overlooking the harbor in Horta, Faial's port town. Or you can wake to a view from your room's private patio of the 7,611-foot summit on the neighboring island of Pico.
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« Reply #51 on: July 29, 2012, 09:01:24 pm »

Out on the street, gossiping village women go on their morning rounds to the bakery and a fish market that oozes with eel, barnacles, limpets and clams. Businessmen gesticulate in the Praca do Infante overlooking the marina. Young men riding sidesaddle on horses laden with milk cans clip-clop into town.

Horta's leisure set - mostly yachtsmen passing through on their way back to Europe from the Caribbean or Bermuda - gets going sometime after 10 A.M. The cafes fill up. Wind surfers and sailboats dot the blue-green water. Families set up umbrellas on Praia do Porto Pim, a crescent beach, punctuating one end of the harbor like an inverted comma, protected by a wooded mountain. After drinking in the sun - for the Portuguese, the tanner the better - small groups meander to Cosme, a currently favored beachside restaurant, for a cold, slightly fizzy vinho verde (green wine), along with grilled squid or lightly fried chicharros (tiny fish that are corn-coated and eaten bones and all).

The beach of Porto Pim, with its clean, calm turquoise waters, is a reminder of the whaling industry that once was big business in the Azores. Until Portugal's entrance into the Common Market in 1986, these waters were often tinged with blood from the whale factory still looming over the bay. Before the ban, Azoreans continued to hunt the sperm whale with the same methods used by New England whaling boats that stopped in the Azores to hire crews in the 18th century: with narrow boats and hand-thrown harpoons.
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« Reply #52 on: July 29, 2012, 09:01:43 pm »

As the beaches fill up, a few take refuge in the cool greenness of the island's interior as a refreshing change of pace from the cool blueness of its perimeter. Some head for the hills, careering up switchbacks to the caldeira, a volcanic crater at the island's center. Others drive west to Capelinhos, a small volcanic islet that appeared off the western tip of Faial in 1957. The lava flow eventually linked the islet to the coast, producing a moonscape. The chocolate brown beach surrounded by red and gold volcanic rubble is perfect for cooling off after a romp around the volcano.

About 6 o'clock, things pick up on the Praca as day trippers return. Fishermen unload the day's tuna and swordfish onto trucks. Passengers arrive by ferry from Pico. Beach-attired youngsters who have been cavorting in the praca disperse as the sun hides behind the houses ascending the hills of Horta. Mount Pico reddens, its tip sharply outlined when it is not cloud-covered.

The evening ahead holds no great surprises: fish dinner, coffee, lots of conversation. There is no night life in the Azores. But that doesn't mean people go to bed early: the art of storytelling remains intact.
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« Reply #53 on: July 29, 2012, 09:02:10 pm »

Don't mistake the Azores for tropical islands. Although they are green and inviting year round, summer is the best season, when flowers and water sports are at their peak. Summer temperatures average in the mid or upper 70's, but winters are cool (in the high 50's) and rainy. Flores, the most western - and many say most beautiful - island, gets 83 inches of rain annually, more than twice as much as Sao Miguel.

Having already seen the lushness of Sao Miguel, I couldn't imagine what an island with twice as much rain would do with all that water. As I toured Flores I found out: half a dozen lakes clustered together like tiny jewels in a mossy setting. Hundreds of waterfalls cascading down basalt cliffs in the island's interior to fajas, the flat coastal plateaus on which a few pristine villages spread out toward the sea. And, befitting an island named Flowers, hydrangeas galore.

On Flores, I began to understand why the word insularidade - insularity - always comes up when Azoreans describe their islands. Flores is too isolated for decent television reception. The boat that brings fuel and other staples can be delayed for months in winter by stormy seas. Flights are canceled when high winds keep the plane from landing.
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« Reply #54 on: July 29, 2012, 09:02:23 pm »

Azorean poets write of the yearning of the people to cross the seas that separate them from the world. And many of them have. Once, as we drove along a mountain road, a village appeared below. ''Only one family lives there now,'' the driver said. Between 1960 and 1981, the Azores population dwindled by 42 percent, according to the Azores Bureau of Statistics, mostly the result of immigration to the United States and Canada, leaving only 250,000 people spread out over some 900 square miles.
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« Reply #55 on: July 29, 2012, 09:02:40 pm »

It was a sunny and warm February day when I asked Humberto Augusto, a wiry fisherman with an assessing gaze, to take me in his small boat to Corvo, Flores's little sister island two hours away. ''You must come back in summer,'' he said, ''when the weather is better. In summer I go every day, but now the sea is too rough.'' Humberto and his father, Jose, are the top fishermen on Flores.

Surprisingly, only 3 percent of Azoreans make their living from the sea. The dramatically steep and unprotected coastlines limit accessibility to the Atlantic. So, despite the spring-like day, I trusted Humberto's judgment. But I was still set on going to Corvo
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« Reply #56 on: July 29, 2012, 09:03:45 pm »

Humberto and his father couldn't understand why I wanted to go. Rising starkly out of the ocean, Corvo has no beaches, no hotels and no restaurants. All it offers the traveler who braves the boat ride from Flores is luxurious vegetation, quilted fields and a narrow-corridored village where all 363 islanders live on five square miles. At its center is the collapsed rim of the volcano that formed the island. The island is green and misty and primordial.

In the end, Humberto relented. I still don't know what made him change his mind. I like to think it was my persistence. The sea was as rough as it had been, and the sun was still shining. As we approached Corvo, it reminded me of a cupcake whose batter had spilled out a bit on one side. ''You must have a great will to see Corvo,'' Jose said, his hands busy knotting fish line. The boat was tiny, and two-foot waves tossed it to and fro like a pendulum. But I was glad to be going. My ter jeito had finally come in. ISLAND HOPPING, SHOPPING, SLEEPING AND EATING Getting There

TAP Air Portugal, the national airline of Portugal, flies direct from Boston to Terceira once a week, with round-trip APEX fare from $480 in winter to $674 in summer. Suntrips (800-444-7866), a San Francisco charter company, also flies to Terceira weekly, June to September; $799 round trip. Two charter companies that fly directly into Sao Miguel are Azores Express (800-762-9995 or 508-677-0555) from Boston June to September, at $349 to $549 round trip, and Map Tours (201-438-8002) from Boston (also to Terceira) and Providence, R.I., at $399 to $499 round trip. Getting Around
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« Reply #57 on: July 29, 2012, 09:04:08 pm »

From Faial, one can design a minicruise of the central islands going by boat from Pico to Sao Jorge to Graciosa to Terceira for about $30.

Another way to get around is to fly from Sao Miguel to Flores, take a boat to Corvo and fly to Faial. Then take a boat trip to Pico and Sao Jorge, fly to Terceira and then back to Sao Miguel. That journey covers seven of the nine islands on one airplane ticket available from SATA airlines that allows free stopovers in Terceira and Faial on round-trip flights between Sao Miguel and Flores (about $130, make reservations if your time is limited). Food

Restaurant prices throughout the islands - whether at a barren tavern or a cozily decorated dining spot - are almost identical. Fish dishes are between $2.25 (at 154 escudos to the dollar) and $4.50, while meats are $3.50 to $5.80. Dining rooms at major hotels have higher prices, usually between $7.50 and $11.50 for a meal that includes soup, a fish course, a meat course, dessert and espresso. Portuguese wines run between $2 and $5.85. SAO MIGUEL. In Ponta Delgada are Nacional (18-20 Rua Acoriano Oriental; telephone 22807), Coliseu (Avenida Roberto Ivens; 27120) and London (21 Rua Ernesto do Canto; 22500). Places for lunch around the island are Cavalo Branco in the village of Santa Barbara (23 Rua do Meio Moio; 98365), west of Capelas, and O Fervedouro (3 Rua do Passal; 72820) in Ribeira Grande FAIAL. Beachside favorites are Cosme (Rua Nova Angustias; 31344) and the more rustic Praia-Mar (23061) on Almoxarife beach. Club Naval (Rua Vasco da Gama; 22331), a popular yachtsmen's restaurant on the harbor, serves up a wholesome rabbit pie. Vista de Baia (9510) in Varadouro, and A Arvore (23934) in the village of Lombega both serve grilled chicken. Accommodations
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Corissa
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« Reply #58 on: July 29, 2012, 09:04:30 pm »

Knowing there are fewer than a dozen hotels on the islands, the savvy book early for summer, or else visit in late spring or early fall. Your travel agency will have the most luck if it gets its information through an agency in Fall River or New Bedford, Mass., where there is a large Azorean immigrant community.

SAO MIGUEL. Hotel Sao Pedro (Largo Almirante Dunn; 22223), $47 for a double room, is a restored manor house in Ponta Delgada, with excellent service and a Georgian colonial interior. The comfortably modern Hotel Avenida (Travessa do Sao Joao; 27331), also in Ponta Delgada, charges $44 for a double. Outside the city are Bahia Palace, a luxury hotel on Agua d'Alto beach, which charges $85 for a double, and the cozier Caloura Resort (93240) on the cliffs of the wine-growing village of Agua de Pau, with swimming pool, sauna and panoramic restaurant; $42 for a double. And In Furnas, the Hotel Terra Nostra, which sits in a tropical garden with a large thermal pool (Rua Padre Jose Jacinto Botelho; 54104), charges $51 for a double room.
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« Reply #59 on: July 29, 2012, 09:05:21 pm »

FAIAL. In a private garden overlooking the harbor, Hotel Fayal (Rua Consul Dabney; 22181) is a full-scale hotel with swimming pool, tennis courts, restaurant and disco; $38 for a double. Estalagem de Santa Cruz (Rua Vasco da Gama; 23021) is an inn built into a 16th-century fort on the harbor; $37 for a double room. Crafts

Among the many shops selling crafts are Casa Regional da Ilha Verde (25 Largo da Matriz), Ponta Delgada, and King's Acre (telephone 23939) in Lombega, Faial. - B .P.

A road on Pico at the base of 7,615-foot Mount Pico; on a boat from Vila Franco do Campo to Ilheu, an extinct volcano out at sea; Sao Sebastao Church, illuminated; windmill on Faial; hoisting a volcano-heated lunch, Sao Miguel, right (Barbara Paulsen) (pg. 19); chapel overlooking Vila Franca do Campo, Sao Miguel; lava rock interlaces fields of flowers (Barbara Paulsen) (pg. 35)

Correction: June 25, 1989, Sunday, Late Edition - Final A picture caption on April 2 misidentified a church in the Azores. A reader reported in April that it was the Convent and Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Esperanca; confirmation has just become available from the writer, who was out of touch.
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