Spelunking and More

Up at 7:00am this morning to get to the airport for the shortest commercial flight we’ve ever taken … 19 minutes, 16.9 seconds from wheels up to touch down. We hopped from Terceira to the island of Pico — named for the volcanic mountain peak, the highest point in Portugal at 7,713 feet. 





Except for our accommodations, we literally have no plans for the next few days. After deciding that it was going to be much too expensive to rent a car. We decided to hire a taxi to give us a tour for a few hours of the island and then drop us off in the little village where we are going to stay. He ended up taking us to several spots that we would’ve never found by ourselves, including another lava tube cave that we were able to go into.









He also took us about halfway up Mount Pico, and we stopped at the visitor center, where hikers begin their climb to the top. Hiking to the top is definitely something we could do and kind of want to do… But we are not prepared to do it on this trip. We shall leave it for next time.







We finally arrived at the house that we are going to be staying. Yet again, we have been able to find a place that we think is going to be just perfect. We have a magnificent view from our balcony looking over some fields and then across the water to another island … São Jorge.  This is Alina, the owner of the house. She gave us a good tour, and showed us how to use everything.





Look at the view from the kitchen window… Kristi is going to enjoy doing all the dishes… Just kidding.



After getting settled in just a little bit, we decided to walk into town and get something to eat. We ended up finding a small restaurant along the waterfront which was quite delicious. They had some fancy expensive things that we didn’t want to pay for so we both ordered a cheeseburger. it was actually very delicious… Or we were starving… But it was very tasty. 



While pico is the second to largest island in the Azores (Terceira is smaller), it only has about 14,000 inhabitants.  That means the little village were staying in probably has just a few thousand people,  even though we think it’s the second largest village/town on the island.

The town this evening is very quiet, probably because it’s Sunday. So most of the stores and markets and restaurants are either closed or have closed early for the day.  

Both of us are quite tired because we had to get up early and did a lot of driving around today. Additionally, Jim has a little bit of a cold… But he’s hanging in there.  We plan to take the next few days very slow, and maybe not even leave the village. We shall see what happens. 

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