What an adventure – 5 Islands, fantastic landscapes and a lot of trouble. More about that part later. For our 25days trip we have chosen to stay on following islands: Terceira, Flores, Corvo, Pico and Horta. All islands very different from the others.

Terceira has one of the nicest and oldest cities – Angra do Heroismo. What is also typical for the island are the many green fields with black stone walls around. It looks fantastic from a higher position. Here we had a fantastic holiday house directly at the ocean. My highlight was the vulcano where you can walk in the inside and down into a little cave – Algar do Carvao

 Flores impressed us with an almost Hawaiian Landscape. A picture of beautiful waterfalls I have seen some time back was my reason to go there. Of course it is even more impressive in real life. Also a lot of small crater lakes are all over. A very beautiful island, also very small.

Corvo our third destination is basically a city on a vulcano and the smallest of all Azorean islands. Somehow they put a runway close to the ocean. The windmills are nice to see, also the crater is a highlight, sadly it was covered in clouds all the time so we did not hike up.

Pico was island number 4 which has the highest mountain of Portugal – Pico. We drove a lot round the island on small and bumpy roads, but also on the longest streight one of the Azores – 9km. A lake with mountain Pico in the background for sunset was the highlight. On the coast we experienced some big waves.

Faial was the last island. Horta is a sailors destination with a lots of ships in the harbor and a lot of paintings of crews crossing the atlantic. A must stop is Peters Cafe. Horta itself we liked very much, it is nice to walk up and down the streets and the harbor. The island itself also has a volcano in the center and a only 60year old extension to the west – here the island grew after a vulcanic eruption.

Now about the adventures part I mentioned earlier.

Terceira we started the tour. Due to a delay in Lisbon we missed our flight to Lajes. We had to stay 1 night in Lisbon and thought we would have one day less now on Terceira– instead we had a couple more. Our flight some days later to Flores got cancelled 4 days in a row due to a big storm. Every day (4 times) check in at the airport, waiting, the flight was cancelled, get the luggage back and back to a hotel. It was surreal when we could finally fly the 5th day. On Flores the police has obviously nothing to do and is looking for tourists… I leave it like that. What was even more crazy was that the supply ship could not dock in Flores for 2 months. The supermarkets were empty. No Tomatoes, almost no fresh fruits, even the bottled water was almost gone. Crazy, also the restaurants had reduced menus. Corvo was the same situation. Corvo has no car rental, transfers are depending on local taxi business. During our stay there was some sort of dance event, they booked all taxis, and we had to walk even from the airport to the hotel – which was the only one on the Island, just 1km around the runway. On Horta the roof of our house blew off some days before we arrived – so we had to look for a new accomodation. And finally on our way back one piece of our luggage was lost. Not just delayed – at the moment it looks it is completely lost. (update: we received it after a week!)
On all beaches (except on Horta) we found Portuguese Galleys – which are very poisonous. They look nice and blue. And I cannot remember a single day without wind/storm. Quite heavy from time to time. Well it looked nice on pictures that was good

So in the end (despite all the trouble with our flights) we have a lot of good memories but hope to have less adventures on the next trip. Enjoy the pictures