Azores: Flores

First stop: Flores. Flores is mind-blowingly beautiful. Not unlike Patagonia, one beautiful view opened up to another. I met the limits of my linguistic abilities to react to beauty; I just kept saying “WTF.” Starting with the rainbow that greeted us when we arrived at Aldeia de Cuada, the village where we would stay.

Aldeia de Cuada was a set of converted cottages that had been abandoned. If we'd ended up trapped there for the duration of our stay, it wouldn't have been awful. Well, it would've been, because Flores has some mind-blowing sights, but still. 

Most the sights of the islands are meant to be driven to rather than hiked around. Our first full day on Flores, we hoped to set out for various hikes around various sets of lakes; instead, we ended up driving to both, with a set of waterfalls in between. When I say “we,” I mean Kiera; I don’t drive stick, although after this trip I feel the need to relearn.  

We started with two side-by-side crater lakes: Lagoa Comprida and Lagoa Negra.

Then we went to see some waterfalls, of which you can only get the scale when you see them from the road,

but they are also worth beholding from up close.

From there, (the royal) we drove to another set of side-by-side lakes (this time, separated by a whole road). There was a lovely view along the way.

Kiera had understandably had it with the driving, especially on dirt roads, so we parked and walked to the lakes.

By the next day, we were up for more walking, but we didn't envision this as a hiking trip, the hike up Mt. Pico aside. I thought there would be more short, leisurely walks. Our second day in Flores, we thought we were setting out for a somewhat leisurely walk from our village, via Faja Grande, to Ponta Delgada (the one on Flores, obvs). We thought we were almost there when we realized we weren't even close. Couldn't complain about the view.

But oh did we complain about everything else. The problem wasn't the length of the trail, or even the elevation; it was the condition of the path, which often took us over muddy, wet rocks. I embarked on the hike in sandals, one of which broke (luckily, not in a catastrophic way) because the sandals--glorified flip-flops, really--slide around on my feet when wet. There were bees and wasps, to which I am severely allergic. There wasn't, as I said, the length per se, but the fact that we'd so underestimated it. We went through our provisions of granola bars long after we were really f*ing sick of granola bars. We were running low on water. We were running low on time (we'd thought we'd hike round trip, but we were definitely going to need to cab--if we could find a cab). The trail seemed to never end (how do we have 3 km left? didn't you say 3.1 km an hour ago??), in part because we were moving slowly over the numerous treacherous sections. At one point, as we were navigating the muddy boulders with streams running through, Kiera said, "this is fine." As in, dog in the on-fire cafe "fine."

By the time we got to this view of Corvo, we'd have real roads the rest of the way.

We made it to Ponta Delgada--to its one restaurant--and ran into a German woman who was also staying at the village. We cabbed back together to her car, seeing this other lake along the way.

Her car was at Faja Grande, where we stopped for a swim (well, I did).

And that was what we saw in Flores. The next morning, we'd take off for the central set of islands.