Month: February 2022

First thing in the morning, in the short stay car park at Heathrow, I gave the keys to Bergman to a complete stranger by the name of Jabil – I took a selfie with him and then watched him drive away.

He didn’t have me on his job sheet. He took the car though. “Is there anything you can show me to put my mind at rest? This feels a little bit like I’m just … giving my car to a stranger…” He showed me some numbers on his mobile screen… I had a plane to catch. If Bergman has been put into a container and shipped off for a respray, the trail will be three weeks cold by the time I get back from here. Fingers crossed he’s honest.

A long flight to Riyadh. I passed the time watching atrocious movies that I’d never normally be able to justify watching. Justice League, anyone? Mister Magorium? We flew over Tabuk a good hour before we landed. I watched it go by on the map. That’s my destination. Now I’m flying back the way I came in a smaller plane. Not the most efficient but hey it’s the only option I was given.

Riyadh was a carpet of lights out the window.

That’s all I got of it. Huge and flat and in grids, and brightly organised and flowing. I didn’t have any time to leave the airport and take in the sights though. I had to get out through international security. First a stern man with a temperature monitor for fever. Then a succession of inscrutable faces, mostly with heads covered in that familiar red and white headdress. Eventually I am fingerprinted and stamped and I’m through. Then I have to walk past men with dogs and x-ray all my bags for exit. Then through customs and nothing to declare. Finally the automatic doors open and there’s a crowd of men in front of me squashing to the barrier.

I try to travel in a suit when I’m traveling internationally. It raises my chances of an upgrade. Plus it’s easier than packing the thing. I also have a trilby on. This get-up makes me something of a target. The first word somebody addresses to me, less than a second after I emerge from the secure door, is “taxi?”. I decline. Three seconds later I get another offer. This is like Thailand. The second guy follows me. Asks where I’m going. I tell him I’m ok. I am trying to orient myself though and he can see it. “Domestic departures? Come in taxi.” I assure him I’m ok. Even though I haven’t a clue where I’m going. I’ve got hours before my connecting flight leaves. I shake him off firmly but politely and walk in completely the wrong direction with purpose.

Eventually I go back on myself and find a sign that says “shuttle bus”. I wait by it. “You want taxi?” I am asked. “I take bus,” I respond hopefully. “Good luck…” He shakes his head. But I persist and five minutes later the bus fights through the lines of taxis and picks up myself, a woman in her seventies with a red head covering and a mild looking young man with glasses. “Zug???” The woman shouts at me as soon as I sit down. I think she’s a bit deaf. “Zug???” I shrug helplessly. Is she using the only European word for train she can think of to try and ask if this bus goes to the train station? I can’t help her anyway. “ZUG???” She’s going by the principle of “say it loudly and the foreigner will understand”. The man with glasses speaks softly to her in Arabic. I pretend to look out the window. She shakes her head at him contemptuously and toddles off the the bus driver to shout “ZUG” at him for a while. Eventually she sits down muttering.

The moon is upside down. The bus honks its way out onto the open road and I’m just hoping it goes to the domestic terminal. There’s no way to walk there, according to Google maps. But it does. I get off. The other two remain. I hope she finds her zug.

I get a couple of free lounge accesses with my bank account travel pack and I haven’t used any for ages so I use one now and settle down for some free meatballs and soggy veg and an orange juice. Time passes quickly. My flight is called. I go to the gate and try to board the plane last as is my way. But… my policy of boarding last and then ignoring my seat if I don’t like the look of it falls flat because nobody in this country gives a fuck what it says on their ticket. It’s a free for all. Both flights there has already been somebody in my allocated seat when I’ve got on the plane. Nobody is sitting where they’re supposed to. If this plane goes down they’ll have to do it all by dental records.

I’ve got a guy sitting next to me because, he tells the steward, “I like this guy – he’s English.” We have exchanged about 8 words and he has glommed onto me. He’ll be hard to shake the other end. Thankfully my car hire is sorted. He’s just friendly I think, but I can never overlook the chance he’s selling something. He is devout as well. Mohamed is his name. Currently he’s singing softly to a long (about twenty minutes so far) devotional prayer that he has brought up on his mobile phone screen. His voice is a melodious and very soft tenor. It’s surprisingly beautiful.

Prayer is everywhere. Young men by travelators in the airport lay down their mats towards Mecca. The plane took off to a beautiful travel prayer from Mohammed. I often find faith attractive, perhaps because of my polytheistic approach. This strange devout country will do a lot to keep me curious. I suspect I’ll be too busy for out and out tourism. But I’ll find time to plug into this unfamiliar vibe, and work out how to go about unseen. Italian woollen three piece and trilby ain’t gonna cut it. I stick out like a sore thumb, but that’s my usual disguise in stress or unfamiliar situations. I become big and visible and clumsy and stupid and friendly and nobody thinks I’m a threat.

I wish I spoke some Arabic though. I’m only just making sense of the alphabet. Duolingo and I are gonna have to spend some special time together.

Meantime I’m just learning numbers so I know the speed limit. I’m gonna have to drive to the hotel in an hour or so and I’m shattered and it’ll be dark. Fun fun fun.

A spin through London. I paid £99 to have somebody in a smock shove something up my nose so I can get a piece of paper by midnight telling me I officially don’t have Covid. I had to do one at home this morning as well because I’ve just arrived back in June country. Now I’m waiting up despite the fact I have to leave the flat early tomorrow morning. It’s the last piece of admin I need to be able to relax into the odd reality of going somewhere completely unfamiliar for a few weeks.

I’m planning on driving to Heathrow tomorrow early and putting my car into a long stay car park for three weeks. It’s another ton to do it but then I can get to Heathrow in half an hour and I don’t have to worry about getting impounded if they change the bloody parking restrictions outside my flat again. They do it all the time and you only get 24 hours to move the car. I hate it.

Travel is harder than it used to be, and more expensive with all the extra stuff. When the Eurostar was new they had brilliant deals for people under twenty five and I would occasionally wake up in the morning and just decide to go to Paris. That kind of thing feels much harder, not least because I’m not 22 and idle anymore. Saudi is going to be hard work.

I’ve had to be really organised in a way that I’m not used to at all on this turnaround. I’ve thought through my wardrobe as best I can. I’ve charged up enough of my devices to sustain me through the 8 hours or so I’ll be in the air. I stopped at Waterstones for a new book. I think I’m going to be ok out there despite the quick turnaround.

But now I’m stymied because this little rip off clinic place in Putney is leaving it to the wire in order to analyse my snot and tell me what I already know – that I don’t have Covid right now.

… and the email came through. I don’t have Covid. £99 for less than 5 minutes of attention. They are paying rental on a little cubicle in the Putney Exchange. They have a nurse and a receptionist and then somebody with a qualification who writes the thing you have to show them before you get on the plane. But when I arrived ten minutes before I was due there were two people waiting outside and another one in there getting tested. This Covid testing lark is big money however you look at it.

Well at least I’m certain now. I’m gonna book this parking and go to bed and I’m really not looking forward to tomorrow morning. Hopefully I’ll set enough alarms. Zoom.

Sad to be back in the UK but my visa came through just now so there’s another adventure a little tiny bit too close for comfort. I’m on the bus from Stansted right now with Lou. It is cold and slow and Lou has to get a million trains to get back to Brighton tonight because of engineering or whatever. My head hurts.

As soon as I get home I’m gonna order something stodgy from Deliveroo and chuck all my clothes in the washing machine. I don’t really know what to bring to Saudi so I’m just gonna turn over the contents of my case, repack it, go to sleep and wake up for a Covid test and a bit of time making sure the fish won’t die while I’m off gallivanting.

The thing to keep hold of will be the week that Lou and I have just had. What a privilege. That distant volcanic rock, shrouded with rings of cloud round fertile mountains boiling with life and warmth. How has it never been on my radar before? In the summer you can commission boats to take you out and give you the best shot you’ll ever have at a selfie with a blue whale. It’s no surprise that every day my phone buzzed in the evening like an electric toothbrush as Lou was sending me the millions of photos she took. All those photos you’ve seen in my blog? Pretty much every one of them was by her. She’s got an eye and a habit. It means that this incredible week has a handy little recall tool. If I’m in the desert feeling sad because there’s been nothing but flies sun and sand, I can open up my phone if it hasn’t overheated and I can look at gorgeous photographs of blown out mountains and seascapes. The one thing I might not have so much of is photographs of Lou herself. There are tons of me. She had to remind me, and the last few days, to take some of her. I got uncharacteristically snap happy in order to try and tip the scales slightly back the other way. So at least I’ll have them.

It’s cold here. It’s dark and it’s cold and windy and I’m thirsty and I’ve got no water and I need the loo. Only one more hour on this packed bus though. We are coming into the suburbs of London.

I do wish the turnaround wasn’t so bloody quick. I’ve barely got time to settle and I could sleep for a week. Still. I’ll be busy and I’ll be somewhere new. And it won’t be cold and windy.

I also wish there was that jolly hostess serving cakes and tea on this National Express bus. We had to throw away our water at security and I’m so damn thirsty.

This morning we woke up in Villa Varzea, The Garden Nest. This is an old manor house owned by a doctor who helped put this little village on the Azorean map by expounding the delights of the hot springs and by generally being a decent and philanthropic fellow. It’s still in the family and Monique has converted it into a number of beautifully appointed “nests”.

Ten minutes drive from here is Ponta da Ferraria. There, if you pick your way across the pumice, you will find ladders in the sharp stone leading down into the water of a small natural bay in the rocky Atlantic shore. At the landward side of this little cleft, boiling hot water flows right out of the magmatic rocks and into the sea. At the seaward side, the cold hard waves of the atlantic crash in, but the shape of it offers some degree of protection to bathers from the hard waves of this ocean. Ropes are secured across the cleft as additional handholds. It’s hard to describe. At low tide it is a little pocket of vigorous and hot sea. “It’s like being in a washing machine,” our hostess remarks.

I come out feeling invigorated and beaten up. Low tide was early morning so it was my wake-up. I shunned the ropes and found my way into a crevice with hot water at my back and the crashing waves at my front. Apart from the very real danger of having my head wanged against the pumice, it was a brilliant start to the day.

Water was the theme today. Water IS the theme here. We went up to caldera lakes and stood beside them in the cold. We went down to caldera lakes and sunbathed beside them in the heat. It is every season simultaneously here. Today is our last full day. We made the most of it.

I’ve been avoiding the local speciality but it’s my last day. I couldn’t go any longer without a plate of grilled limpets. I am never going to eat grilled limpets again. But it’s always worth a try. Like snails, they taste of what they are prepared with. Unlike snails they also taste of the sea and have bits of sand in them.

The end of the day found us watching the sun set over the ocean from one of the rare black sand beaches – this one at Mosteiros. We just sat and absorbed it all. The darkness falling on our last night here in the middle of the deep ocean, surrounded by all these mystic waters – hot and cold, red and blue and green, hard and soft, old and new. This is an extraordinary place and feels ancient even if it’s young.

“In six years it will be much more crowded,” predicts our hostess. Perhaps. It’ll help their economy. But we seem to have caught it at a powerful time. People are pleased to see us and there aren’t too many of us. Granted we never spent time in the city but I don’t think it’s going to be Chicago down there.

I’ll be sad to leave tomorrow but I’m rested and warm and happy and calm. I’ll miss all of that and more next week if I’m going to be running around like a maniac in the Arabian desert.

If you have been reading the last few days worth of my exploration of São Miguel in winter, you might have noticed how changeable the weather is here in the middle of the Atlantic.

This morning we went to look at the place where perhaps it all began for this island – up on the edge of the blown out crater of the Sete Cidades volcano. It’s a huge double crater filled with water. It must have spewed out much of the surrounding land in a vast sustained eruption many millennia ago. Now it sits in beauty and fertility, and it hasn’t blown its top for 142 years.

In the late 1980’s a group of mostly French investors built a luxury hotel here, at Miradouro Vista do Rei – The King’s Viewpoint. They called it the Monte Palace Hotel. It’s incredibly well located for beauty, the Monte Palace. It looks over the fabled twin lakes of the caldera. It is just downhill from an even more spectacular viewpoint – the Boca do Inferno. It is a wonderfully well placed building, or… well … it would be if the weather wasn’t so changeable and it was more accessible. We beat the car up the long slope in the sunshine. About an hour later this is my photo of the view from the nearby Miradouro.

Clouds coalesce around these peaks. There’s nothing else to attract the moisture of the oceans. The local joke in the eighties when the hotel was being built is that it was commissioned by somebody who had been to The Azores once, on a sunny day. Nobody ever expected it to succeed apart from perhaps some of the investors. There’s nothing up there but the view and if you’re in the clouds then you’re just stuck in an expensive bar.

Lou and I came to this island on the only direct flight from London this week. It was incredibly cheap but there were only 73 passengers of which a good 50% were returning locals who had been visiting London. There are 88 bedrooms in the hotel. Back in the late eighties it was more expensive to fly to the Azores from the UK than to North America. None of my friends have said “oh yes I’ve been there” yet. 27 years after this hotel venture collapsed, there still isn’t enough tourism to maintain it really.

The hotel was in debt when it opened. It was open for just over a year, 89 – 90 and the investors pulled strings to get it to win one of those “best whatever” awards that we all secretly know are mostly about money changing hands and just occasionally about merit – (so long as money has also changed hands). Then it closed and one local guy with dogs was employed to keep it secure. He lived there and fought the damp and the failing electrics. Slowly and steadily this huge opulent folly began to crust with squelchy mold. The elevators failed. The water crept in and what can one security guard do about lifts broken by damp? He did his best. Then they stopped paying him. It was never going to reopen. I’d love to talk to him. He was there for years before the money stopped, and he stopped, and the building became a folly full of valuable things.

First the thieves. Perhaps they told themselves they were hunting souvenirs. But they took the lifts. All the electrics. All the furniture. Everything they could take. Everything. Then the angry kids broke all the things that were left until the Azorean government mobilised to deliberately get rid of all the windows for safety. Then fires, smashing things, graffiti. The place is a total complete and utter ruin.

Somebody finally bought the place. It was supposed to reopen in 2021 after a refurb. They must have bought it sight unseen at the wrong time. Covid stopped any plan they might have had. But it was fucked before they started. The only new thing is an impotent wall of breeze blocks, to which somebody has, in no uncertain terms, taken a sledgehammer.

When we were there we saw more people than we have seen anywhere else on the island. Wandering through the gutted rooms, taking selfies on the ruined balconies, sitting on the roof looking dazedly across the caldera below. It’s a mess. It’s a total mess. It’s incredible. Humanity. Greed. Pride. Filth. Time.

It is evening in our little stone house amongst the waterfalls. The sun sank into the Atlantic like a fierce white ball about half an hour past. At the time we were returning from a tiny local shop named after the proprietress – the Mini Mercado Helena Tavavares. She sold us some tuna and passata and a spot of pasta. Enough to throw together sustenance for the evening. No parrotfish tonight.

We went to as many waterfalls as we could today, and to springs and lakes. Here on this remote island surrounded by the salt deep, the land is forcing up water constantly, belching heat and minerals with it.

Late morning we stood by a clear but sulphurous hot spring too hot to safely put your foot into, fenced off at Caldeira Velha. Bubbling water was pushing up with the stench of inferno, and then running through pipes into a colder pool arranged by clever humans for safe but expensive wallowing. Eight euros. We got in, wallowed our money’s worth, and met Gustav. He flies drones over golf courses and then puts the footage on to YouTube. He was relaxing happily despite having lost his wallet full of cash yesterday. “People here are honest,” I remark. “You’ll probably get it back somehow and it’ll still be full.” “I’m not sure. Most of the South American drug trade comes through here.”

Maybe so. I’m nothing if not naïve but I haven’t seen much evidence of that sort of behaviour. This place feels for all the world like a sleepy and uncomplicated little Portuguese village that just happens to be on a long thin strand of basalt extruding multiple volcanoes and boiling with greenery and steam. “It’s a cross between Scotland and Hawaii,” says Gustav. “I haven’t been to Scotland,” he qualifies. And on that basis, I can see where he’s going. It’s not the deep fat fried Mars Bar plus punch in the face Scotland he means. It’s the Gavin Maxwell books with otters and somebody trying to sell you membership of a golf course Scotland. And yes, there’s a viewpoint on every corner. And virtually no pubs. The viewpoints have stone tables and barbeque areas. “Grill and relax,” they say on Google Maps, and I can imagine that the youth of São Miguel go and hang out on promontories overlooking the ocean and feed one another tasty wholesome grilled food before carefully clearing up after themselves and going home. It hasn’t been fully blighted here yet by the Mac and co. Things have their own character, and options are personal and varied – not yet squeezed into conformity. It’s hard to get good coffee but at least it’s not all made by the same worldeating fucker when you do find it.

This morning I followed a precarious metal walkway up some pipes that were built around a waterfall as part of a hydroelectric plant. There were moments so vertiginous my legs were shaking. Lou waited as I struck on up and forward through the cataract and out the other end. Just as I was thinking “surely I shouldn’t actually be here” I saw one of the footpath markers just placed on the metal of the walkway. There’s a freedom in being given the opportunity to go somewhere very slightly dangerous if you choose to. We’ve mostly lost that freedom entirely in the UK.

I like it here. I’m exhausted though. So much air. So much green. So much water. I’m going to make a cheap and tasty meal and then wash the road off. Tomorrow we go west.

That’s the luxury portion of the holiday over with. My God. As Lou says: “We have been ruined by the Terra Nostra Garden Hotel“. Five courses for breakfast. Incredible service and attention to detail. The only disappointment was the cozida last night. Mostly we had just incredible complete service from top to bottom, and a snip at the price, for what you get. I’ll definitely book again if I ever come back here.

We reluctantly packed up our stuff from the room, moving on to our first self-catered option.

We stopped briefly at Furnas lake to admire some cold water for a change. There’s a little death-garden for Jose do Canto. He was one of the wealthy botanists whose obsession seeded the diverse flora of these islands. His mausoleum is surrounded by more rare plants but we had no cashmoney to pay the €3 entry so we couldn’t get in. Having just had two nights living inside the most incredible botanical garden it didn’t feel like too much of a loss. We got in the car and began to pick our way east.

It took us a long time to cover a short distance. The roads are perilously winding to the east of the island, and as soon as you leave the main thoroughfare you’re driving on loose rocks. We puttered around the south-east coast and then all the way up the eastern nose of São Miguel. Our eventual destination was going to be the Parque Natural do Ribeira dos Caldeirões. Stops were frequent. You’re never more than ten foot from an incredible view on this island. We had our fair share of vistas. And for the most part, today, the rain held off. In fact, the morning was so bright I picked up a bit of a tan. Afternoon brought clouds again but never stopped the beauty.

We have arrived now in our “cheap option” accommodation for the next two nights. We are in a little house in a valley full of waterfalls. As I write I can hear our local cataract vaulting down the treacherous mountainside. The path to it has completely collapsed with rainfall. This seems to be a frequent issue here, with this living shifting land. Hot water pulsing up from deep underground, and perhaps the earth here really is the peak of the Atlantis mountains, pulled down for hubris before time was recorded. Every night the guests of the Terra Nostra Hotel walk in their hooded grey robes to commune with the heated bloodwater from the depths of the earth. As we walk we look like monks. Who is to say we are not unknowingly recreating some ancient atlantean ritual to Poseidon?

There are no dawn hot springs for us here though. Just a hot bath in a damp room. We have a little stone house, built from the black basalt that is as ubiquitous here as Jersey granite. It has clearly not seen many visitors over the pandemic. It feels like it needs to be lived back to life again. Barely contained mold rinds the walls. The kettle is broken. The clocks are stopped. I daren’t light the fire for fear of filling the place with smoke. A dehumidifier roars in the bedroom until we switch the damn thing off. We are on a volcanic rock in the middle of the Atlantic surrounded by waterfalls. I can’t expect everything to be dry. We will be happy here, plugged in to nature, surrounded by falling water. A different kind of beauty.

We didn’t cook tonight. Many of the villages we drove through to get here are centred around fishing, so we stopped at Restaurante Tronqueira in Nordeste for the grilled fish of the day. We were the only people there, and we were joyfully served Mediterranean Parrotfish – a new eat for me. The waiter insisted they were hauled out of the sea this morning. I’m willing to believe him. It was an incredible meal on a quiet side of the island, and gave us just enough time for me to spank it round the good road to our stone house. They do a road race here in March – much like the sort of thing they do in The Isle of Man. As a result, the perimeter road is a clean fast surface while all the other roads are shit. Just like The Isle of Man.

This place is just off the perimeter road. I’m looking forward to having a new- sightly mouldy – launch point for exploration for the next two days. Then we move again.

Year of the Tiger. Happy New Year. My animal is in ascendance for a year. Hear me roar.

Received information says that these islands boiled out of the shifting tectonic plates between 0.3 and 8 million years ago – the oldest being Santa Maria, south of us. That is very recent in geological terms. People took ages to find them. They began to be settled in the 1400’s although there is some small evidence of basic agriculture in the fossil record beforehand – (shipwreck?) – it seems that they did lie mostly uninhabited for a long long time. There are no deep canyons dug by rivers – they haven’t had the epic amount of time required to do that work. Most of the early fossil record is fish.

Now they are teeming with life and a rich panoply of life at that. This morning we took the three minute stroll from our hotel room to the huge iron rich warm hot spring. We arrived in the dark just before dawn and we were the only ones there. With the dark, the steam and no glasses, Lou and I lost each other. As dawn came up I found her talking to a pair of Ruddy Shelducks. She genuinely thought she was talking to me.

Those two ducks can’t quite believe they’ve found a hot spring that matches their colouration. We can’t quite believe we found this incredible hotel in this incredible botanical garden. We leave tomorrow to go to a self catered place so today we just made the most of being here.

The camellias are in bloom. Whole gardens of different ones, throwing open their bright blossoms to the perpetual spring air.

Over most of the pathways and running up the trees is always a bright coating of strong green moss. If something can grow here, it’ll grow. The local produce is so fresh and good. Even the orange juice at breakfast tasted fresher than I’m used to. Green green green. And THE AIR.

Neither of us are used to a holiday where we aren’t combining it with something else. But I don’t have to walk 25km every day or so a show in the evening or do complicated things with numbers and accountants. I’m just gonna do nothing much and look at beautiful things. And eat.

We just got out of a natural jacuzzi and right now there’s some meat buried in a volcano that is gonna be in my belly soon. It’s called a codizo. I’ve ordered one in advance. I’m going to get dressed for dinner and finish this after because even though I’ve troughed on cheese and fruit already today, I’m very much looking forward to this… The dining room thrusts into the gardens with art deco curved windows like a 1930’s luxury ocean liner. I want to sit there surrounded by the uplit trees and eat good food and dammit I’m gonna have a glass of wine or two because in a week I’ll be in Saudi and the place is sodding dry.

—

Azorean wine goes down very well. As does buried meat. We are sitting on the balcony listening to the frogs. It is possible we will have clearer days for the rest of the week. But I’m perfectly happy here if it starts raining every thirty minutes. Tomorrow morning at dawn we will swim in the hot blood fountain with the ducks once more.