After our passage to the Azores, our first few days at anchor were spent resting and recuperating, enjoying a few meals and drinks ashore, and checking out the town of Horta.
While Horta is definitely the center of activity on the island of Faial – about half the 15k strong population of the island live in the main town – there’s definitely more to see on the rest of the island. So, we took a break from city life, rented a car, and took off for a tour of rural Faial.
Like the rest of the Azores, Faial is a volcanic island. While we didn’t have the best weather and so weren’t able to hike into the main caldera at Faial’s summit, we were able to check out Capelhinos volcano – its last set of eruptions extended from 1957 into 1958. In a sign of times past, the eruption was first noted by a lookout on a nearby ridge who was scouting for passing whales to hunt.
The landscape of Faial is pastoral, and the pace is slow – we stopped several times to let a herd of cows be driven across the road in front of us. And as expected, the views to seaward are spectacular.
If our experience on Faial is representative of what we can expect, we’re looking forward even more to checking out the other islands of the archipelago.
