May 16

May 16 Lagoa Do Fogo

PSA: 575 metres of elevation gain is a lot of elevation gain.

This morning, we got an early start, heading to breakfast as soon as the dining room opened. I was delighted to see my new friend, the bolo levado, and made another new friend in a raspberry orange juice that was more smoothie than juice. With a big hike ahead of us today that would take us past lunch, we headed over to the Mercado da Graça, which was just a few minutes from the hotel, to get some fruit for the hike. Sadly, it was closed. Turns out, today is Freedom Day, which is the day celebrating the Carnation Revolution in 1974 that ended a dictatorship. So the market wasn’t open. Back to the hotel we went to get packed up and ready to go. Soon, we were in line to pick up our rental car and heading off to find our starting point for the day. We have a cute little electric Yaris, which took us an unreasonable amount of time to figure out was actually running because it was so quiet.

We were heading towards Lagoa do Fogo, a lake that apparently has multiple viewpoints, given the number of signs we saw for it on the highway. We absolutely took an exit that was far too early for where we needed to be but eventually, found the right spot and got the car parked. Then we started walking uphill.

This hike was taking us up to - you guessed it - Lagoa do Fogo,, which sits in a crater of a volcano that last erupted in 1563 and now is a nature reserve. According to our “Walking on the Azores” guidebook, we could expect the 15.5km hike to take us about 5 hours and have a total ascent of 650m. The route starts on a concrete road which felt practically vertical and wasn’t anything too exciting but after a couple of kilometres, you get to the trailhead and leave the road behind. We had a beautiful, not-too-hot day which was great because the elevation gain was in spurts where you’d go up these pretty steep inclines and then get a bit of a break before another steep incline. Once we were on the trail, it was mostly wooded and often shady, which made the incline much more pleasant. When we felt like we had been climbing forever, the incline levelled off and we were walking along a water channel. The channel was full enough that there were a few places it was spilling over the top and little bridges had been constructed to get you over the running water. Then, it was into a valley with lots of little channels running all over it before climbing the last little bit of elevation and reaching the lake.

The lake was beautiful. There were very few people at the top of the trail and no one on the lake, at all. I’m not sure where the lookouts were but I had read that it wasn’t uncommon for the view to be obscured by mist so I think they were quite high up. There was no mist in sight today, though - just a couple of fluffy clouds. Our guidebook had said the hike was a loop but the trail markers were showing us heading back in the same direction we came. I didn’t have the guidebook and we weren’t really keen on the idea of winging it and finding out a trail had been closed or something along those lines so we headed back the way we came. We saw relatively few people on our way up to the lake so I was surprised at how many people we saw as we were heading back down, especially since the day had gotten quite warm and it was starting to get quite late in the afternoon. In the end, we finished up just before 3, for a total time of about 4 hours. And we ended up climbing 576 metres. It was a lot. You should see the exercise ring on my watch zoom around and lap itself over and over again.

On our way back, we decided we’d stop at a pineapple plantation. Once again, our navigation went awry and we first landed at a car rental place. It wasn’t very exciting. We did find the right spot soon after where we saw the cutest little pineapples. Pineapples take TWO YEARS to grow. No wonder they try to kill you with their thorny little spikes! It was fun to see the greenhouses full of tiny pineapples.

Our last stop for the day was our Azorean wine and cheese experience. When we start planning a trip, the first thing I do is look for food tours. And after some debate, we landed on the Azorean Wine and Cheese experience with Hungry Whales. They did have the kind of tour we typically take - wandering through the streets of the city but with COVID, we thought this was a better option. And it was a delight!

The experience took place at a local B&B - and it ended up being just EDP, myself and one other traveller. Our guide for the evening was excellent, sharing all sorts of local history with us. We had such a lovely evening, trying several different Azorean wines, including a small glass of port and a mint aperitif, which I thought was very reminiscent of the dentist in all the best ways (I like the dentist, okay - they always tell me how wonderful my teeth are!) These were paired with delicious cheeses and some excellent jams. The cheeses were far superior to the ones we tried yesterday. I should have kept better track of what the cheeses were so that we could try to come across them again in our travels but alas, I was too busy enjoying everything. Our evening included a tour of the garden, where we saw bananas and citrus growing. It was a delightful end to a busy day.