The Atlantic's Floating Kingdom (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine April 2003

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DESTINATIONS: The Azores
The Atlantic's Floating Kingdom (Cont.)


	Flores' steep coast (Tony Arruza/Corbis)

OUR TWO-DAY stopover has morphed into two and a half weeks by the time we finally tear ourselves away from Flores and set sail for Faial, which lies 120 nautical miles to the southeast—an easy 24-hour passage. A boomtown during the heady whaling days, Horta, the island's main hub, is the traditional port of call in the Azores for cruisers. Besides several bars and a decent array of restaurants, Horta boasts a full-service marina. After 2,500 miles, it's a rare vessel that doesn't show up here looking for something.

The harbor is crowded when we arrive. The Atlantic Rally for Cruisers Europe—a rendezvous organized by the World Cruising Club, for the swarm of boats crossing the Atlantic from the United States each summer—arrived a few days ago. The marina, where we land in our dinghy, A. Robustus, is surrounded by a tall concrete seawall covered with multicolored murals left by sailors who've passed through. According to tradition, it's bad luck to fail to add your boat's name to the wall. Thousands of names, crew lists, and tattoolike cartoons of ships, whales, and sunsets pepper every inch.

We head toward the inner harbor, where Horta begins to lose a bit of its Caribbeanized, this-could-be-any-port character. Peter's Cafe Sport, which served gruel to whalers in the early 20th century, still stands on the main street, now serving wine to Belgian and Dutch hikers who come here to explore the rolling hillsides. Farther along the wharf we find a small fleet of fishing boats bobbing in a slick of diesel, their grizzled crews eyeing us suspiciously. A few gleaming sportfishing boats sit among the old rusted hulks. One has a sizable tuna strung from a halyard, evidence that the waters around here offer some of the best sportfishing in the world.

Later, on a slope above town, we find the studio of John Van Opstal, a Dutch scrimshaw artist who immigrated to the Azores 20 years ago. As we share tea on his terrace, I ask Van Opstal if he thinks the islands have been ruined by the recent inundation of visitors. He points out that beginning with Portuguese trading posts in the 18th century and American whaling stations in the 19th, the islands have always been more connected with the outside world than one might assume.

"Horta is very cosmopolitan," he says, patting his handlebar mustache. "We're very far from anywhere, and yet I get visitors from all over the world all the time. They bring me news."

Then he asks about George W. Bush and pours another cup of tea.

Those who don't come to Faial to fix a mainsail or to hook a deep-sea trophy fish come to cross the deep straits to the neighboring island of Pico and climb its 7,711-foot volcanic cone. Along with several others in what's becoming a transatlantic clique, David, Lani, and I take a water taxi over to Pico one rainy morning to test our mettle against the mountain.

When we arrive at the base, it's already 60 degrees, about ten degrees colder than when we set out, and the spiked peak of the cone is now veiled by a thick, swirling mass of clouds. We set off into the mist.

The lush green landscape soon begins to change. Pastures give way to rocky crags, and hydrangeas are replaced by sheer nodules of black rock. Within an hour the gentle slope has careened skyward, and with each step loose bits of scree tumble down on those unfortunate enough to be bringing up the rear—usually me. The mist gives way to drizzle, which in turn gives way to rain. A second later, the sky is split by lightning that illuminates the hillside, followed by an earsplitting clap.

The next second, we're sliding through mud toward the bottom, warding off our sense of collective failure with the promise of a warm glass of mulled Azorean wine and the thought that we just crossed the Atlantic in small boats. Who needs mountains?

When we finally extricate ourselves from Horta, it's ten days later and early August. Since the fall gales will begin in a few weeks, we decide to aim for Terceira, one of the Azores' easternmost islands.

At 153 square miles, Terceira is also one of the larger islands in the chain. Its town of Angra do Hero'smo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has attracted the attention of the European Union, which is pouring money into the tourism infrastructure here—namely, expanding the marina, in order to steal some of the cruiser pie from Faial. Still, despite the wonderfully protected harbor, we're the only boat hanging off the beach. We spend a few days swimming in the cool water of the bay, fishing along the rocks by dinghy, and enjoying the village of Praia da Vit-ria's take on Festa, which includes bull running on the beach.

In 1985, Azorean writer Fernando Aires observed that his fellow islanders live in a state of continual mutability: The islands are neither here nor there—as he put it, they're "a spiritual synthesis of both the old and new worlds. Alpha and omega in permanent ambiguity." After six weeks, I can't discern whether this is true—the islands' magnetic charm makes everything seem ambiguous. When Lucy is ready and we're pulling away from Terceira and its gentle slopes fade into the haze, my question is whether they ever existed at all. By then, of course, they're gone.

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