Easy-piecey kind of day, driving around the island and
stopping here and there to take some pictures. Unfortunately it was raining, so
I was the only one to get down from the bus to go through the tunnel (the wind
was howling) and come to the vista point overlooking the caldera of Cabeço Gordo, a small but very
impressive caldera depression, maybe 4 kilometers in diameter and 500 m deep.
If you follow in my footsteps make sure to take the time to walk all around the
caldera rim (about two hours) or even descend to the bottom (another couple of
hours). Unfortunately the wind was blowing a storm right into my face, so I
don’t even have a picture to prove I was here.
The island is beautiful, and the hydrangeas are in bloom,
which makes for a very pretty countryside. In fact, given that these flowers
grow like weeds the farmers have planted to border the pasture fields, creating
the ultimate tableau of happy cows.
At lunch I had the chance to talk with our guide Lucia, a
pleasant woman of 40 something, who freelances as tourist guide whenever she
gets a chance. So what does she do in the meantime? Well, a few years ago she
went to the US
with her family, and they stopped in Dunkin’ Donuts to buy a few, very
expensive cookies. Years later one of her sons moaned that he would like to
have one of those cookies, so Lucia sought a recipe through the internet,
experimented a few times, and finally settled on something she liked and baked
a batch for each of her sons, who were going to be camping that weekend. The
“Cookies from Cousin Lu” became an instant hit with the boys and their friends,
and now she runs a profitable small operation known through the whole island of Faial
One of our last stops was the westernmost end of the island,
in Punta dos Capelinhos, where we
came across the products of an eruption that took place in the mid 1950’s. What
was peculiar about this eruption is that started out of nothing under the
ocean. The water started boiling, and now and then an explosion would blast
unto the surface, with black jets of tephra shooting through the air, and
seconds later transforming themselves into plumes of the white steam. Powerful
blasts of tephra rushed over the surface of the ocean, and slowly built up a
low mound that was quickly washed away by the waves of the ocean. The tug of
war between the volcano and the sea continued for several days, until
eventually enough tephra had accumulated to isolate the vent from the sea, and
the eruption slowly evolved into a Strombolian eruption, and the quiet eruption
of lavas shielded the nascent island to secure a permanent addition of 2 square
kilometers to the area of Faial . Unfortunately
the Portuguese failed to publish the photos and reports of the eruption of
Capelinhos, and a similar eruption in 1965 off the coast of Iceland got the
glory of the name. So this type of submarine-to-subaerial eruptions are now
called Surtseyan rather than Capeloan. No better proof of the old academic
adage: Publish or perish.
In the afternoon we took the plane to Terceira ,
where we will spend the last three days of our adventure. Tomorrow is a free
day, so I think I will rent a scooter and see what I shall see.
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