We didn’t think about going closer to home. We’d visited the Azores in the past, but only quickly, just passing through, and we never had the time to explore properly. The locals kept telling us, ‘take your time here, it’s amazing. There are craters, deep green lagoons in the mountains, where you can paddle, or even windsurf. There are rivers and hot-water lagoons where you can bathe at any time of the year. Surf all day and relax under the midwinter stars, inside a jungle of giant ferns…” Obviously we thought they were overselling the place as if it were the garden of Eden itself but the seed must have been planted.
Discussing where to go this past winter, one of the Azorean islands, Sao Miguel, rose to the top of our list of possible destinations, beating off far more well known surfing spots. We were told that Sao Miguel is the island that possesses all the charms of the archipelago and, therefore, would be a great place for our ten day expedition. After a direct flight from Lisbon we arrived at Ponta Delgada. We had to improvise. We didn’t have a plan and we didn’t know where to start looking for waves. We didn’t know if we were going to find the locals we’d met before over there. So it was a delight to see that they would become our friends, guides and partners in the adventure.
