Travel day (or not)

Not much going on today except a visit to the wine museum and one last (we hope) walk along the lava beds on the coast. The wine museum explained how the people of the island brought soil over from a nearby island, cracked open the lava beds, and put soil in the cracks.

Astonishingly (at least to me), the vines grew and have thrived. And the vineyrds themselves are a UNESCO world heritage site — rock walls built by hand hundreds of years ago making a huge number of tiny enclosures to protect the vines (which grow vertically on the soil so they sort of look like pumpkin vines). The wine museum says that if you took all the rock walls and extended them in one straight line, there would be enough to circle the equator twice. That’s a lot of backbreaking rock wall work!

We got to the airport with quite a bit of trepidation because it is very very windy. As for now, our flight to Terceira Island is scheduled to go, but the ticket agent told us not to bet on it. And tomorrow and Sunday are supposed to have higher winds. If we can’t get off the island till Monday, we will probably just go straight to Lisbon and forget about the lovely isle of Terceira. Our flight leaves Lisbon on Wednesday. Maybe it was not such a smart idea to pre-pay our hotel. :-). But if we are stuck here on Pico, the airline will put us up, provide transportation, and feed us. That’s very nice, but I would really rather leave!Read more