Pico Alto

Today is Friday. The plan was to visit a volcanic chimney in the centre of the island in the afternoon. It was open to the public at 2:30 pm. In the morning we would look for an interesting place to do a little hike. The landscape of this island is very pretty and ever-changing - farmers’ fields with cows, lava fields, volcanoes, ocean grottoes, quaint little villages, forests with Japanese pines and big cliffs. We knew that we wouldn’t have difficulty finding somewhere to walk. And we found a trail - Roche Do Chambre.

We didn’t want to go too far, perhaps 4 or 5 km, as Chris had sprained his ankle 3 days ago
and we wanted to take it easy. We have walked over 500 km on this trip.

The trail started out easy and it was beautiful. The volcanic rocks were covered with small flowers, mosses and plants that looked like bonsai gardens. Tiny Microsystems growing in the rock. Magical.

As we walked further, we walked past tall Japanese cedar forests. As usual the landscape kept changing. The photos will explain the plants along the trail better. About three km into the walk, we entered a rough part of the trail with a lava stone path. We had to be super careful, especially Chris.

Finally we exited onto a grassy path and guess what? I went down! I twisted my ankle too! Darn. We checked the quickest way back to the car and it looked like we had 4 km to go but mostly on roads so it wasn’t too bad.

Once we got into the car though, my ankle started to puff up. I guess that we should start acting our ages and start taking it easy, a bit.

What a pair of gimps we are today; and now gimps … with limps…

We didn’t go to the volcanic chimney with its 300 stairs. Back to our accommodation... get those ankles up.Read more