the north shore

A fajas with Terceira on the horizon.

You turn down the lane (a canada) to a faja. The road goes from paved to clay and gets progressively steeper. I worry if the car I borrowed from Felipe is really rugged enough to get down this. Or up it. At the bottom, I head back immediately, afraid of being trapped before I have to leave for the airport in a few hours.

Sao Jorge has steep slopes, with the bays of the island separated by a tall ridge, which was completely foggy when I drove through it.

 At the bottom are the towns: fajas. This one has a swimming pool too.

Or you can just dive in.

 It's pretty rugged. I'm glad I don't live somewhere so remote. But even the farther spot on the island is less than an hour's drive to the airport.

I had fish for lunch, and a half bottle of Casal Garcia. Refrescante vinho verde!

 In my last hours on Sao Jorge, I discover the coast north of Urzulina. This is a collapse crater.

While most of Sao Jorge is quite old, with many fajas and town established in the 19th century and earlier, Velas decided it needed a municipal auditorium with a modern look. That's the library to the left of the sailboat.

A soccer match was playing when the sun came out.

 As I flew back to San Miguel, I looked out the window and saw my cottage!

Even better, there was a rainbow.

So now I'm back in Ponta Delgada, the land of beautiful churches. There are so many more people here than on Faial or Pico or Sao Jorge. Though I went to dinner, and had my first piripiri, and ran smack into Antonio and Lino, who had recommended it to me.

The church was all lit up tonight. I headed out for a free concert (at 10 pm on a Sunday). For some reason I thought it would be organ music, but instead it was 70s and 80s rock and rock.

 Whoever she was, she has undenial charisma. She reminded me of Tina Turner.

after dark on the isle of Sao Jorge

As I sit here in the darkness, at my glorious bungalow by the sea in Sao Jorge, the Azorean cagarro (aka Cory's Shearwater) is out terrorizing the night. I first heard them as Felipe and I arrived from the airport last night.

Click play to hear what they sound like:

I had no idea they looked so sweet, because I haven't seen them. They only carry on after dark.

Nothing special, just the moon, a day past full, rising over Pico island, as seen from my balcony.

Refresher on the central Azores: I started in Horta on Faial. Yesterday I was in Madalena Pico drinking wine. And now I'm on the rigid spine of Sao Jorge, the wildest of the ilhas I've visited. I am staying at the dot in Urzulina.

Today I drove east to Topo and back in a car I borrowed from Felipe; it's on the honor system. I just need to put gas in the tank. It's been a while since I drove a clutch on such steep hills.

But first, breakfast. Felipe left a starter kit of bread, Sao Jorge cheese, and homemade cherry jam on the porch. Did I mention that cheese is why I came to this island in the first place?

It's true. At my 40th birthday party, which lasted a weekend, one of the stops was Matos cheese factory in Santa Rosa, where Joe Matos makes real Portuguese-style cheese, specifically St. Jorge. Ironically I was double-booked at dim sum, so I didn't even get to go to Matos, but Melanie brought me a hunk of cheese, still one of my favorites.

(Sao Jorge is pronounced San George, for no reason I can make sense of. Portuguese is a gorgeous language, that still sounds like Russian to me.)

I mentioned Matos's St Jorge cheese to several people, including Felipe, who spent a few months working in San Leandro. All of them know Joe Matos. Azorean communities are a small world.

I was also thrilled to see espicie cookies, even stale ones. The ones at Cafe St. Jorge, the adorable Portuguese cafe near my house, are even better. 

Sao Jorge reminds me of the wild and wooly West Coast of New Zealand. I had flashbacks to staying at the Old Slaughterhouse in Hector, David's paradise atop the crashing Tasman. Except I didn't have to climb a mountain to get here.

It rained this morning, but it's so humid that everything grows here. Enormous figs. Sunflowers bigger than me.

As you drive along the steep ridge of Sao Jorge, the towns at the bottoms of the hill. The villages are known as fajas (pronounced fa-ZHAS), and they are exquisite, like this church and the ornate tile house at the top of this post.

Even the churches have churches. (No one was there, so I haven't found out why.)

I stopped for coffee at a cafe in one of these towns. A table of men were playing a fierce game of dominoes on the porch.

Finisterra is the cheese factory at the end of the earth. Literally. While the fresh Topo is lovely, the curado (aged) Topo is even better. Of course I bought some to take home, for 8 euros a kilo (or less than $5/pound). The woman who helped me, and let me taste the 6 months aged Topo, also knew Joe Matos.

Finally: the end of the road at the lighthouse. Felipe said sometimes cows swim in the sea here, but I didn't see any.

Not bad, eh?

I made it back to Urzulina to watch Portugal lose to Uruguay in the World Cup semi-finals. The clouds parted briefly.

So here I am, in my cottage at the end of the world, wishing I had more time in Sao Jorge, and planning tomorrow's adventures. If only those crazy birds would go to sleep.