Enroute Terceira 39:18.311N 30:26.773W
Henrywood
Melvin Magnall
Sat 20 Jun 2009 16:09
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Well I'm sorry to say that I don't have the
skills to describe the Flores experience. Awesome comes to mind ,but it's a bit
over used these days. We,re glad we had the diesel shortage or we would have
missed this spectacular jewel.
Flores boast the most Western point in Europe at
about 900 miles of the coast of Portugal. The people are Portuguese and they
speak there own language and it doesn't sound muchlike Spanish to me. The island
is only 10 miles tall and 6 miles wide, but we still managed to drive from 1000
to 1600 in a rental car
.
 We started in the SE corner and drove W then N
then NE to the East coast then down to Lajes our starting point hugging the
coastline most of the way. The coastline is rugged and the land is cultivated
right up to the cliff top. Even the cows are squeaky clean with shining
coats.
The waters in the calderia (depressions left by
extinct volcanoes) leach down and spray out of the cliff sides in spectacular
waterfalls.
The infrastructure is first class with excellent
pavement (Oh! to have a motorcycle here).
The villages along the way are quite small and
little commerce, but all the folks have wonderful quite large vegetable gardens
and hydrangea (sp) and cannas are the hedgerows.
All houses seem to be single story white stucco
with red tiled roofs.
Many of the people emigrated to the USA to
places like Boston, Fall River, and New Bedford to be involved in the whaling
trade. So they now have a yearly fiesta next month .where many of the emigrants
return for a few weeks
     I've reduced the size of these pics to save on
file size. I hope not too much.
I hope this gives an idea of how wonderful this
place is.
We are once again motoring into a head wind
on our way to
T erceira 200 mles to the east where we hope to get some laundry done before heading to
Southern Ireland.
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