A Watery Farewell

It was Sunday
It was the 2nd January 2011
It was the day after New Year
It was landfall in the Azores
It was Porta Delgada
It was 8am
It was pouring rain
It was hardly light
It was dreich
It was miserable
And the place was dead or at least still asleep.

But we were up, breakfasted and on a tour of the island with special reference to a volcanic crater up in the mountains.

I invite you to Imagine the scene.
A busload of passengers, windows steamed up, the rain coming down in stair rods and being invited to first of all walk round a village which was totally shut with people still in bed, and the rain making time the cobbled streets run like gutters and then to drive to the top of a mountain, park in the clouds and see absolutely nothing , far less the famous crater.

Then back down the mountain to view a commercial pineapple farm, where I saw only 3 pineapples in all the green houses, because they take forever to mature.

Not only was the whole trip a huge disappointment for us, the tour guide must have thought her worst nightmare had come true.

However with Sod's law firmly in operation, just as the ship was about to sail at 1pm, the sun came out, the mist and clouds disappeared and the Azores were transformed in all their glory into the islands of my imagination.
They are verdant with a lot of fields of dairy cattle and rolling hills, but also mountains and beaches. Actually a bit like Perthshire in Scotland, barring the beaches.

They would be well worth a visit in the summer when it would be hot and sunny.

As this was the first visit of the Queen Elizabeth, we had a fire tug follow us out of the dock spraying water in celebration.
This makes a more fitting blip than clouds seen through the bus window.