The whaling industry features prominently in Pico’s history. The last whale was caught here in 1987, using the same methods that had existed for a couple hundred years. We learnt all about the history of the whalers and the whaling industry from a couple a great museums in Pico.
We started at Museu dos Baleeiros in Lajes, on the south side of the island. Along the way, we got held up by some free range cows on the road. Better pay attention to the ‘cow crossing’ signs here!
The museum was free to enter as it was a Sunday. (Admission is only 2 EUR, but still). The tour started with a documentary on the whalers, filmed in the 1970’s. It is possibly the best documentary I have ever seen. It should have won awards when it was released (for all I know, maybe it did). You really felt you were part of the whaling community by the end.
The museum itself contains whaling boats and tools used back in the day. Because that was only 30 years ago, there’s great examples of everything. The museum itself is housed in former boathouses.
Now that we knew more, we recognized the whale watching huts dotting the hills. A whale watcher would sit all day in the hut, sending a flare when they spotted a whale (about 3-4 times a week). The rest of the crew would drop everything in town to race out to the sea. The whale watchers still exist, except now they watch for whales to radio over to the whale watching excursions.
A busload of tourists showed up just as we were leaving, luckily we were ahead of them today! We bought a small souvenir from whale bone (the art form is called scrimshaw).
Next we drove to the north side of the island, about 10 minutes coast to coast. We got held up a couple times again with cows on the road :)
We had lunch at Casa Âncora in São Roque, which was one of the best meals we had in the Azores. I had the steak (the beef is all free range and really tasty here, see notes above about cows on the road), and Heather had the grilled octopus which was the best octopus we’ve ever had.
We then stopped in at the Whalers Museum, which was about the industry side of things. It’s housed in a former whaling factory, where the blubber was turned into oil and whale liver into terrible tasting vitamins. Pretty much the entire whale was processed.
Because the whaling industry came to an end in the late 1980s, and there wasn’t much of a market for used whale processing equipment, it’s all just sitting around looking like it’s ready for the next shift coming in tomorrow (but with the lack of any fishy smell). The only thing comparable for me was the old printing press centre for the Toronto Star, which was sold for scrap metal when it closed.
Anyways the two museums really give a great background into the whaling culture of the island.
We tried to go for a wine and liquor tasting at Adega A Buraca (which does local liqueurs) but it‘s closed on Sundays. Instead we went to Museu do Vinho, which was in Portuguese only, so we didn’t get much out of it. They did have an original grape press, which was cool, as well as a 800 year old dragon blood tree in the grounds.
Pico Island is the Azorean Island most noted for its wines, in particular its white wines, which take on a very mineral/flinty taste due to the volcanic rock and a noticeable (and really interesting) salty taste due the proximity of most of the vineyards to the Atlantic Ocean.
We had dinner at our hotel again, trying some different things from the menu. Good thing they’re closed on our last day here, we would have run out of menu items. We split an appetizer, pasta, and then the pork for our main. It was excellent once again.
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