Transatlantic Cruise, Part 4: Ponta Delgada

Day 493 (November 3, 2019) - Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel, Azores

It took two days at sea to make it from Cádiz to the Azores, a group of nine small islands in the middle of the Atlantic. The Azores are officially part of Portugal and Portuguese is the native language. Our Spanish skills were one again useless, but we did enjoy the few occasions we got to use them during our prior port stops in Spain. The two days it took us to get there were fairly uneventful. The weather was cool but pleasant. The sun was warm. The Atlantic was relatively calm, but it did rock the boat enough to be a constant reminder that we were on a floating ship. The glass-like stillness of the Mediterranean was long gone. When we arrived in Ponta Delgada I was kind of glad for the opportunity to get off the water and onto land. It never seemed to matter how many motion sickness pills I took, the swaying of the boat always seemed to get to me a little bit. Not enough to feel ill, but enough to not feel like I was at 100%.

Sailing through the Atlantic on our way from Cádiz to Ponta Delgada.

Ponta Delgada from the top deck of the boat.

The cruise ship docked in Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel. This was the largest city of the Azores, but that’s not saying much. We were there on a Sunday so it seemed like almost everything was closed, giving the town a very sleepy and somewhat deserted feel. It only took us a few hours to walk around most of it. The weather that day was overcast and cloudy, although I imagine that is what most days there are like. 

The islands of the Azores are all volcanic in nature. At one point we had considered renting a car to drive around the island and see all the scenery, but we were getting a little paranoid as we got closer to the end of our trip and we didn’t want to risk anything going wrong on the way and not making it back to the boat. We had made it this long without any trouble and we didn’t want to introduce any more risk. But even walking around town I was surprised by the variety of flowing plants and birds. We stopped and sat on a park bench for a while and I took some pictures of the birds and plants that were around us. 

We made one last stop on our way back to the boat and that was in a grocery store so that we could pick up a bottle of port. This was technical Portugal, after all, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity. At the end of the day we went up to the top deck of the ship to watch us depart and sail away from land for the last time. It was kind of strange to watch this small island disappear, thinking that the next time we saw land was probably going to be in Florida. But we woudn’t be getting there for a while. We had a whole week of sailing ahead of us and not all that much to do.

Our last view of land for a while.