Our second day on Sao Miguel started again with a rainbow over the bay of our hotel. What else do you need? Some clouds were in the sky but they disappear quite fast on the Azores.
We started from our hotel Caloura and set our satnav to ‚avoid highway‘. The small and curvy roads are much more interesting.
In Villa Franca do Campo we stopped to have one of these local tiny coffees called ‚bica‘. The places in the middle of a village are often very nicely designed have a small garden or park and the church fronts are wide. The flagging has a variety of pattern.
We drove on to Furnas. Every now and then there is a parking lot or a lay by with a wonderful surrounding an a nice view. It is worth a stop. You should get out of the car and have a look. If you don’t like it you can always go back to the car but mostly there is something to be seen behind a small wall and you catch a glorious view.
So we only got along very slowly. Once it was a high viewpoint. Once it was a nice picknick place. Once a botanical garden or a tree nursery. One time an old watch tower and then some interesting plants, that we wanted to see more closely.
Then we spotted a warning sign „30 % decline“. That caught us. We had to go there. Again it was a beautiful place. We got to a parking place with a picknick area. From there you could walk to a ungarded beach. Unfortunately the hiking trails was closed that day. Otherwise we would have chosen this beach for our lunch break.
Instead we went on along meadows and grasslands with mobile milking parfours. Through plane tree alleys which shine red because of a harmless fungus. Behind every turn you get a different view. The roadsides are full of exotic plants. You cannot stop to marvel.
At a nice view point over Furnas we had our picknick. And afterwards we drove along the lakeside until huge smother caught our interest. You have to drive through a parking barrier and after that you have to pay an entrance fee. But it is not much. 50 Cent per person. Also parking is cheap. But you have to pay at the reception desk. There is no machine.
But you can admire how steam comes right out of the ground. Like small bubbles coming out of the water. And there are natural whirl pools. Sometimes fluid earth is thrown into the air. It smells like sulphur and the steam feels warm on the skin. Wooden runways lead through it. Everywhere you can hear a hissing and whizzing. Unbelievable.
At some places there are holes in the ground with a wooden lid. Here you can get your food cooked. Either you give your food to them to be cooked or you can order it at a restaurant. It will be cooked in the earth and later brought to the restaurant where you can eat it. But there are also pick nick places if you want to eat it there right away. We spent quite some time there and in the end paid 40 Cents for parking.
After a short stop in the village where you also can watch steam coming out of the ground and where hot springs sparkle we drove back on the same road. But from the other direction everything looks completely different so you enough to watch.
