Moving house

After a flight lasting just over an hour on a small propeller plane with a rather noisy engine, we arrived back in Joao Paulo II airport in Ponta Delgada, on the island of Sao Miguel. The baggage arrived within ten minutes, and I later discovered, thankfully, that the bottle of white wine I had carefully wrapped in a beach towel survived the experience unharmed. Just as well!
And so out through the customs hall and on to arrivals where....our hire car man wasn't. Minor consternation ensued. A contract certificate was examined, a phone number located but elicited no reply. Around us, happy folk greeting relatives and one or two fortunate folk handing over credit card details and picking up keys.
When all seemed exasperating, I had a final look around the dwindling crowd to find...a bloke with a LUSO car rental sign. He had been somewhere else. For some reason he had the incorrect flight number. But relief all round.
After the production of ID, the signing of various documents and the handing over of a fat wadge of Euro bills, we were about to be shown to our car when our man bumped into a member of the local constabulary and entered into a lengthy conversation. It took a while to prise him away. Finally we were introduced to our shiny grey Renault Captur...not the Ford Fiesta advertised but apparently an upgrade. The Unique Selling Point he told me when I enquired, was that it has GPS.
And so finally on to the road...I did manage to remember that I was now supposed to be driving on the right hand side and off we went careering at a rather modest pace along a stretch of motorway to the north of the city and then off at a sliproad for Capela. Twenty minutes later we were on the north coast of the island and following a wiggly road through one coastal village after another.
Finally following directions we turned off down an unmade track and arrived at the house of our "holiday landlords", Christina and Frank. It took a while to locate them: they hadn't received our text and were halfway through dinner with friends.
But Christina came out to us, very friendly and helpful and gave us a short rundown on our home for the week; a sort of purpose built giant beach hut/ garden house on stilts, surrounded by a lovely garden of its own.
It is small but beautifully formed and seems to have everything we need in a compact and impeccably designed package.