It was still nice weather this morning for our drive to Capelinhos on the west end of Faial, just past the airport. In the 1950’s, a series of underwater eruptions added about 2km to the island. It forced the evacuation of nearby residents, who mostly immigrated to Canada and the US.
It’s now home to an Interpretive Center, which won awards when it was built in the 2000s but now looks very dated. The highlight was climbing the lighthouse. It’s really windy and dusty at the point, so we didn’t stay very long.
We drove back to Horta on the east end, and up Monte da Guia. It was raining and we couldn’t see much through the clouds. We would have had great views if it was sunny!
Had lunch at a random spot near the ferry, Pizzaria California. It was really good pizza, hit the spot. We then killed some time until our ferry to Madalena on the island of Pico, walking down the boardwalk and watching the waves crash into shore.
The car rental guy was there promptly at 2:30pm to pick up the Smart car. We boarded the ferry, using the boarding passes I had received over email when I bought the tickets back in March. We could have just bought tickets at the ferry but it seemed cool to be able to buy them over the web. We had to check our big packs, which was convenient cause then we didn’t have to lug them on board.
We found out why they check large bags, as the 30 minute crossing is a bit rough. Our big packs would have been tossed around and probably injured someone. We sat up top with a clear view of the horizon, so didn’t get sea sick, but got splashed a few times. Oh well.
We arrived in one piece and picked up our packs. On Pico we had a car rental from Ilha Verde, whose offices were just a couple minutes down the street from the ferry. Everything was ready for us, I just had to sign in a few places and we were off in a little Ford Fiesta, which felt like driving a boat after the Smart car.
We drove over to our hotel, Alma do Pico, and that was pretty much it for the day. The hotel gave a great orientation on arrival; even calling to book reservations to see the caves for a couple days out. The hotel has the top ranked restaurant on the island (at least according to tripadvisor, I think that’s partially why we chose the place), so we booked for the next three nights.
Dinner was really good. We split the local cheese board. For mains we both had homemade pasta (it’s an Italian chef) - I had the fettuccine bolognese and Heather had the fettuccine al fungi (this was excellent).
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