San Miguel island - Day 4

Started the morning with a 90 minute drive to the far southeast part of the island to hike some waterfall trails. The drive there was spectacular winding roads up and down mountains and high above the ocean.

I had asked my hotel reception guy for a semi challenging hike to a nice waterfall and he pinpointed Sanguinho on a map for me and said it was an hour hike. I hiked uphill 40 mins and came across a fork in the road. One sign saying Prego waterfall and the other Sanguinho. This really confused me but i went with Sanguinho as per the hotel guy. Which turned into a hard 40 minutes uphill to some old houses and a nice view down to the ocean. But no waterfall.

I hiked back down to that fork and went the other way. Chatted with two girls coming back and they said i was 10 mins from the falls. 2 mins later came across another fork in the trail and two different waterfalls on the signposts. One uphill, one downhill. Decided to do the uphill one first. Oh boy, i had no idea what i got myself into. Another really steep hour hike to yet another fork. This time chose the downhill and voila, finally a waterfall after 20 more minutes. Bit small but very nice. Went back and did the uphill fork and it was a meandering trail thru the forest next to a river for about 30 minutes until i hit a ton of mud and turned around and back to the fork.

Hiked an hour all the way back to the very first fork and finally to the main waterfall where i rested my exhausted legs. And wrote my blog for a while. Fair number of young girls sitting on rocks behind me giggling away until i finally looked up and saw two huge naked bums 10 feet in front of me wading into the waterfall pool. Got back on the trails before that naked couple returned and finally all the way down to my car.

Tita and parents got a taxi and met me in Furnas which is half way between my hike and our hotel. We were going to do the volcanic hot springs and botanical garden but unfortunately it was closed. So we settled for another yummy meal with the food cooked underground via volcanic heat.

Back to Ponta Delgada, Tita and i went to a pub for some more backgammon (4-4 now) and ran into Helder who was bartending. We met Helder the very first night of our trip, very nice to see him again. Super nice guy. Tita ended up signing the canadian flag hanging from the ceiling before we left haha. Literally leaving our mark on this town 😆Read more