São Miguel Island, Azores

We had an early morning flight to Sao Miguel, about an hour east of Pico. We dropped off our car rental after checking in for the flight. Dropping off the car took all of 30 seconds.

The flight was on a twin prop, with free seating. The passenger handling is a bit loose here, we walked in disjointed groups past other planes that were boarding. It would have been quite easy to jump on another plane.

Anyways quickly got our luggage and then looked around for our car rental people. (We rented cars mostly from small operations that didn’t have airport booths, it was much cheaper). The very helpful tourist info person at the airport called the car rental agency and let them know we had arrived. She then went through some of the highlights of Sao Miguel island while we waited. Very efficient use of our time :)

The car rental people showed up about five minutes later and we took their shuttle to their depot. On Sao Miguel, we’re now driving a Fiat Panda.

Drove down to our hotel (Solar da Glória ao Carmo) along a highway, which was a bit of a shock after being on the lesser populated islands (I think there’s about 140K people in Sao Miguel vs about 12K on Faial and about the same on Pico).

Checked in and got an overview of island and a suggested itinerary for today (it was nice today but supposed to be rainy the next few days).

Settled in and went to Sunset Beach cafe for lunch, which was really busy, right on the ocean with a beautiful view. They had grilled sardines as a daily special. They were grilled perfectly, reminding us of the sardines we had many years ago in Morocco on our first trip together.

After lunch, we drove to Lagoa do Fogo, one of the three main lake groups on the island. Stopped for the view from Miradouro do Pico da Barrosa.

Drove a bit further to Caldeira Velha, which is one of the many natural thermal pools on Sao Miguel. Bought our tickets (8 EUR each) and then changed to go into the pools. The first one came from a waterfall and wasn’t that warm, maybe 28C. The other two we tried were warmer, about 40C. Some of the other thermal pools on the island are murky from their mineral content; these were pretty clear and no worries about staining our clothes or towels.

We then drove back to the hotel, having had a rather full itinerary for what was a transit day.

We bought tickets online for a national reserve, Ilhéu de Vila Franca do Campo. They limit attendance to 400 people / day, and Monday was the only remaining day available while we were here. The hotel manager actually paid for them as they only accepted Portuguese credit cards.

Had dinner at the hotel (fish soup, then rice with shrimp, matched with wines, and dessert). It was excellent. The dinners were one of the reasons we had booked into this place. Unfortunately, there was a family emergency with the managers, so tonight was the only dinner we were able to have at the hotel over our five days here.