On Tuesday morning Adam and I unfortunately once again woke up to a very cold wet and drizzly day. Our choices of activities seemed fairly bleak but it was Adam’s turn to choose our itinerary and he wasn’t going to let a little rain slow us down. đ
The first activity that he chose was to drive up to Mount Brazil and then go on a hike in the rain to see if we could find a little castle he’d seen on our island map. Funny enough though, the hike ended up being much more cold wet and rainy than Adam anticipated (maybe because two people don’t easily fit under an umbrella?) so Adam opted to turn back and seek refuge in our nice warm car! ha ha! The rain really was coming down quite hard though, so it was probably a good thing we turned back. But I thought it was fun and crazy that we were attempting to hike in such a downpour!
From there we drove over to the Queijo Vaquinha (Terceira’s Cheese Factory) so that Adam could sample some homemade cheeses. The cheese were all quite spicy so Adam was in cheese heaven. I on the other hand am not a spicy cheese fan so while Adam sampled all the cheeses I had fun watching a movie showing crazy clips of people getting bucked around by bulls during some of the 230+ bull runs Terceira had this year. There was some seriously crazy stuff on there! And holy cow do lots of people get hurt, but it was one of those things you just couldn’t look away from. I don’t know why stuff like that is so entertaining! We also were happy because by this time the rain had stopped and the sun came out! Yay for sun! đ
It was around lunch time by this point so we stopped by a little market for fruit and snacks, and then headed to a small local restaurant where we were able to try Alcatra which is the Azoreans most popular meal. Basically it was roast and potatoes served with a side of cabbage soup. But boy oh boy was it good! We got one alcatra to share and still had leftovers! Interestingly enough meat and potatoes is the staple food here in the Azores. I assumed it would be more rice and beans like in Brazil, but the Azoreans really are all about their meat, potatoes, and bread! I can’t figure out how they all stay so skinny!
After lunch we headed up to the mountains to a place Adam heard about called Misterios Negros or Black Mysteries. We weren’t sure exactly where the trailhead was so we parked our car and then started up a muddy dirt road hoping it would lead us to the trail. We did end up seeing a trail sign but it was facing the wrong direction so we thought we were going the wrong way and ended up back tracking quite a bit, bu then that trail ended up taking us down the mountain which we didn’t feel was the right way either. So we back tracked again! ha ha! But it ended up that the trail actually made a LOOP so we could have gone either way! We did end up finding the Mysterious black eventually though so it worked out in the end. đ Yay! We saw some gorgeous scenery as we hiked.
Recognize this old volcano? Yep that is the one we got super lost on! See the jungle like area with the thick brush and trees? That was what we were hiking through..in the dark! Doesn’t look that bad in the light though but man was it thick and dark in there!
Doesn’t get too much prettier than this!
Below is a sample of the crazy muddy trails we were following! Its all for the story though right?
Eventually we did come to some black lava mountains though that we were pretty certain were the Myserious black. See the lava hills to the left in the distance?
It was quite the lovely hike! We really enjoyed it mud and all!