English Version | Nine edens, nine lives

This allusion to the mania for the grandeur of the British (more the English than the others, to be honest), who even after the independence of their colonies kept them in the Commonwealth, has a purpose. When the Capelinhos volcano in Faial erupted on September 27, 1957 (an event the locals refer to as the Capelinhos Mystery), fear set in among the people. The ash that covered crops and houses all over the island even precipitated a wave of emigration to the USA. But many of those who stayed ensured that on October 10, when a small island with a diameter of 600 meters formed (Ilha Nova), they saw a rowboat heading towards it. “What courage,” they thought. Except that when it approached the mound of newly consolidated lava, the rowers stuck a UK flag on it. Did they want a bit more of the bucolic, pastoral beauty they already have on their gigantic island to the west of Europe? Or did they want a strategic outpost in Europe's westernmost archipelago, to the point of jeopardizing the supposedly oldest alliance between countries in the world? Nobody knows, there are no records and the episode is passed down from generation to generation, at the table, in cafés and on benches in jars, in the shade of gigantic araucaria trees. Fortunately, it didn't turn into a diplomatic incident, because on October 29, the islet sank into the crater. On the other hand, the reference to Scotland is also justified. The beauty of the landscape, the patches of cryptomeria and rhododendron forest, the geography (with lochs and mountains) and the temperament of the people always remind us of that British north where a very distinctive culture sets it apart from the rest (and would set it further apart, if it were granted the much-desired independence). I remember that this was the first idea, that of a small-town Scotland or even a more subtropical Ireland, that struck me when I set foot on Azorean soil for the second time (now I've woken up to these things). It was in Terceira. And it must be said that I was already on the ground because, before that, there was the approach from the air and the subsequent sight of the patchwork of various shades of green, like a palette of monochrome watercolors, the plots of land that rotate between them as the cows trample and fertilize them, guaranteeing eternal fertility. Shortly afterward, São Miguel lent me another dimension, that of being able to be on an island with so many worlds within it, which can be visited through considerable car journeys during which it's possible not to see the sea once. That same year, I was crying at the top of the island of Flores, just a few kilometers from Santa Cruz in the direction of Fajã Grande. I admit to being sentimental, but you have to be a dry stump not to be sensitive to that beauty. Because it can be overwhelming, to be surrounded by unheard-of beauty and have no one to share it with, if only by saying, “Do you see that?”, to which the other person nods positively so that we can be sure we're not dreaming. Perhaps that's the greatest lesson to be learned from the world's most beautiful archipelago. Don't travel to the Azores alone. Because the islands really are indescribable. Which makes it almost impossible to describe them. Or for any description to leave a nagging feeling that we're not getting the message across. Maybe that's just it. Some things just don't translate.

I've spent a good part of my life fascinated by ascetics. How do those people in Tibet cope? The isolation, the silence, the weight of contemplation, the time we don't have in our hands but around us. I later discovered, in a movie theater (the most painful documentary ever), that the epitome of separation from everything and everyone is already there, in France, more precisely on a fringe of the Alps called Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse, within the walls of a monastery where Carthusian monks spend the day between matins, prayers, lauds, primes, masses, tertias, angelus, nonas, vespers and completes (for the laity, they spend all their time praying and, from time to time, work the fields from which they make their living). But one day I found myself on the island of Corvo. A pier where a trawler was unloading several dozen kilos of chernes, each eye the size of a spider crab, a kind of square, to one side the airstrip where an airplane was resting but had no sign of taking off, ahead there was a café where I was assured “Sometimes the island lacks bottled water, but never beer” and a conversation with a kind of cab that took me along one of the two roads to see the crater (a cauldron, below which are two lagoons, the one with the same name and Cachimbo) of what the island is, a volcano. There were a few houses, yes, almost all of them with their own pigsties. And there were people too. Two hundred and twenty at the time. Corvo is a kind of huge rock that is omnipresent from Flores, unless you're in Lages, neighboring Fazenda or Lajedo, after crossing the Boca da Baleia Recreational Forest Reserve, in other words, to the south. Here, in Flores, it's worth making an aside. The first shock comes when barely recovered from the scenery, we hear Portuguese spoken. Never before had we imagined that we would have such a place within our borders, no matter how many kilometers separate us (it's another 3,000 kilometers to Halifax, Canada). It's as if a thread of exoticism, lent to us by the further unusualness of a landscape, had been cut off to tie a cord of belonging around our hearts. The island of Flores is only for the tough. It softens them like Uniflores butter (yes, free advertising). I tell you, as a privileged connoisseur of unbelievable places, from the heart of pulsating Africa to sweeping Asia, that this little piece of land almost halfway across the Atlantic is literally gold on a vast blue. There's no other place like it in the world. It's not from this planet. It's straight out of the most fanciful pages of the most creative poet narrating the most sublime enchantment. The route from Santa Cruz to Fajãzinha (from east to west) takes us across what, elsewhere, would be a plateau. Not here. A rugged green mantle of valleys and mountains, like a scale model of something whose grandeur is unjustified, a road on which rabbits and birds cross enough to make up a fable by Teófilo Braga, until we descend to the point where looking back, we can see the point where, looking back from where we've just come (from Fajãzinha, Fajã Grande or Aldeia da Cuada), there is a cliff covered in green from where, depending on the time of year, two to six waterfalls fall (Cascata da Ribeira do Ferreiro, Cascata da Ribeira Grande and its tributaries in times of greater flow) that fall into the Poço da Alagoinha, also called Lagoa das Patas, both names too humble for something that seems to have come out of a documentary about cenotes, the sacred wells of the Mayan civilization. Then, of course, there are the people. And there isn't and never will be, enough space for what could be said about them. 

If we're talking about people, we'll have to go straight to Terceira. “The Azores have eight islands and an amusement park” is a phrase often uttered throughout the archipelago. The people of Terceira, renowned revelers, don't stop from May to September. Whether it's the Divine Holy Spirit, the Sanjoaninas, or the Praia da Vitória Festivities, summer here is intense, to say the least. During the day, life goes on as normal. At the end of the afternoon, you have to keep an eye out for the rocket that is launched. Wherever it comes from, that's where the party is. Just follow the crowd. The bulls are called by their names: “Get off the road, Manuel Rocha's 35 is coming”, I heard as I strolled along in a relaxed way, there's always a trailer to quench the revelers' isolation and thirst, a brave man who confronts the animal with an umbrella, someone who sells barnacles in a wicker basket, much is drunk here, but better is eaten. Terceira is, without a doubt, the most gastronomic island. Of the infinite possibilities offered by the Azorean sea (the bicuda, the name by which the dreaded Barracuda is known here, is ten times better than the swordfish, and the boca-negra, the local name for the redfish, resembles a lobster), we should also highlight the tradition that the first settlers left here, such as the torresmos do cabinho (which dignify our beloved reco), alcatra (a Beira chanfana but with veal, lots of allspice and the local aça- flor) or even the simple favas escoadas, the snack of choice for drinking the incredible Verdelho wine that the island of Pico has become famous for but whose first vineyards were established here, more specifically in Biscoitos (a visit to Casa Agrícola Brum is a must). Restaurants such as Caneta (Biscoitos), Ti Choa (Serreta) or Taberna Roberto (on the outskirts of An- gra do Heroísmo) are ex-libris that the locals will recommend because they themselves don't fail, and Terceira has yet to witness the tourist trap that is rife on the mainland, because with the exception of a few trekkers looking for landscapes that are sometimes reminiscent of Switzerland (the Biscoito and Santa Bárbara Partial Natural Forest Reserves are guaranteed to amaze), emigrants who return for the festivities and some curious people and/or gastronomes, life goes on here as if you didn't have to please tourists. Even though Angra do Heroísmo was Portugal's first World Heritage Site, which in itself would be reason enough for all Portuguese to visit. But we're talking about Terceirans, for whom I have a very personal definition, which involves imagining that we, all Portuguese, were once like this, impolite. It's one thing to be a cosmopolitan from Faial, used to seeing people from all over the world arriving in Horta and drinking one (or several) gin & tonics at Peter's (in Western maritime tradition, no one truly considers themselves a sailor unless they have docked in Horta, after crossing the 35th Parallel, shrouded in mystery and legends), the picaroto who invites anyone from any background to visit his “adega”, that lower floor of the houses from which you never leave, or the jorgense and graciosense, who know very well that anyone who shows up is in for a good time. Another is to treat everyone equally, like Jorge Palma's Na Terra dos Sonhos.

And so we come to the Japanese. Because that's what the people of Terceira, from the top of their Central Group, call the people of Micael, from the East. It's an old rivalry, sometimes not so healthy, but it's more than natural, as stated by this mainlander who knows incredible bickering between lands as close as Costa da Caparica and Trafaria, Seixal and Amora or, let's face it, Alfama and Mouraria. I have family and childhood friends in São Miguel. A childhood not as childhood as the one in which I first saw myself here, in which I remember a man climbing onto a sperm whale and cutting it open with a cutting instrument on the end of a stick. The smell, the hustle and bustle, my uncle teasing me that the best food in the world was whale shit and my tantrum until they gave me a plate of Nestum Mel as such. It was the first time I'd ever eaten Nestum. And that I'd seen a place so remote from this island that now enchants everyone and everything, even before the Netflix series that popularized a place I entered in fear a dozen years ago to pick up my cousin. As an elementary school teacher in Rabo de Peixe, I used to challenge the kids to tell me what they wanted to be when they grew up. They answered with an “xcadô”, which I only realized at first meant “fisherman”. It's not just there. To the west, after Calhetas, Fenais da Luz and Capelas, the direction becomes northwest and we find ourselves in Bretanha, where the old-timers still answer anyone who knocks on their door with “Qui est là?”, which explains the Frenchized vowels of what we think of as the Azorean accent but which belongs to São Miguel in its strongest form. It's a fascinating place. A gigantic island compared to the other eight, with more space for absolute beauty to spread out at will, a succession of craters that are lagoons, lakes that were once craters, active fumaroles where you can cook, natural parks, coniferous forests (cryptomeria) so leafy that they take you back to northern Europe, cedars that take you back to Japan, roads that cut through that patchwork quilt, lined with hydrangeas whose verges, if stepped on, give off a mint scent. There's all this and then there's the Northeast, so beautiful that it's often the destination for a family weekend trip, with roads that wind past waterfalls and incredible views of the sea. Now that I'm talking about a destination that every European (and beyond) dreams of, as long as they are curious and informed about what are still paradises on earth, with tourist infrastructures that allow you to get to know all the island's landscapes in-depth, which are undeniably beautiful and hard to match, I would venture to say that São Miguel doesn't reveal itself in a single stay. You have to let the insularity soak in. With this comes that gentleness that we envy in the people. Contemplating the Azores is not the same thing as visiting the Azores. It's what comes next. That warm blanket that covers us, a rush of affection for a place that will never leave our skin.

Translated from the original in Vogue Portugal's "Portugal With Love" Issue, published June 2024. Full stories and credits in the print issue.