Sao Miguel, The Azores

We had a whirlwind trip to Sao Miguel, learning so much about world travel, the island, and what we would do differently if we ever returned. In a nutshell, if you have a chance to visit the Azores, you absolutely must. The small island of Sao Miguel really packs a punch offering several eco systems found on this great planet. We hiked through lush rainforest craters, hiked up coniferous forests, swam in geothermal hot pools and basked on black volcanic sands.

The scenery that will treat your eyes is literally to beautiful to behold. There were numerous times that we had to tell ourselves that what we were seeing was actually real. The vibrant green mountains falling directly into the vivid blue ocean. One thing is clear on this island, it is full of life and revered by it's locals. They take such pride in their island and have every intention of preserving it's natural beauty despite the direction the world may be moving.

Cows are sovereign here in the Azores. They roam free along the mountain tops grazing on grass so green it looks neon in colour. They drink from fresh water springs and are cared for by their owners. This of course results in some of the best beef you will have in the world. Tender, juicy and full of flavour. Each animal is cared for and respected. Even when milking their goats, the farmer jokes that "you must kiss the goat first before she will allow you to milk her."

There is a great respect for their animals, and for the environment that we all share here.

With all positives there of course comes some negatives. Ones that hopefully if you, or we, decide to travel back, can avoid.

The island is small, measuring 62 kilometres at its length and only 15 km at it's widest point. When we booked our home we made the decision to be outside of the city, Ponta Delgado, and drive to our destinations. Since the island is small, we figured we would have no troubles taking our rental car to the various destinations. Rental cars are unfortunately a must on the island. Public transport is still pretty unreliable and tour buses range from 60-150 euros per person. Our rental car for the entire week cost us 70 euros, a cost we knew we had to splurge on.

What we did not realize, of course, is that although the roads and highways have made momentous leaps in the last few years, you are driving up and down mountains all day. An average 20 km drive to a destination, which would take 15 minutes at home, took over an hour to accomplish here. When you have planned numerous stops in your day, this results in an average of 4 hours in the car each day. A huge time waster, and a hurdle that became increasingly difficult to stomach as the week went on.

Just because you can fill your days with various sightseeing exclusions, doesn't mean you should. We wanted to see everything, but it would have been nice to take our time and relax more at each place. We planned for 2 "free" days at the end of our trip, but sadly the hurricane like weather put a damper on that.

Tourism in the Azores has boomed this year, sadly skyrocketing the prices on virtually everything. Although it is still a very affordable trip, if you want to go, I would recommend doing so soon! With daily flights from Toronto at 350 pp, it's an opportunity you can't miss.

As I mentioned earlier, we stayed in the fishing village of Nordeste. Since most tourists don't often stay outside of Ponta Delgado or even Ribierra Grande, we had a lot of people staring at us. We were certainly the outcasts. We knew that not knowing the language would be a hurdle, but it was more than we expected out in this village.

In hindsight, being close to the city would have served us better. Since we were going in the down season, rainy season, we found most of the local restaurants were closed by the time we arrived. We spent many hours driving around looking for a place to eat. As you know, we love food, this was certainly one of the highlights of our trip.

We learned so much, and next time we will be travelling as a family of 5. Still on a strict and limited budget, I hope to prove again that world travel is not as overwhelming and expensive as most people think.

I am looking forward to the new adventures our family will have, and hopefully you will follow along.

#finalthoughts #azores #tips