When You Come Here

Again, impossible to choose what to post, saw so much, loved so much, and too tired to tell you it all - you really need to come see it for yourself...

Loved the misty conditions for much of the day, especially the two times we drove up high to get a good view, ha! The main was on our way up to the highest point, on the Serra de Santa Barbara (1021m). A surreal place, by a lake, with ducks, chickens and pinky finches (I think) wandering around the mossy trees.

Another highlight for me was the wine museum at Biscoitos (which is free and excellent). So impressed with the ingenuity of folk, who learned to plant vines among the black rocks (called biscoitos = biscuits) by making a hole and filling it with vegetable matter, about nine holes to a curraleta (see extra), a small space surrounded with walls made of the volcanic stones, both to protect from the ocean winds and to retain the heat when the sun doesn't shine enough.

Gratefuls:
- seeing a restaurant just as we were getting hungry, in the middle of a tiny village, them having a table, and it being an outstanding experience; when you come here, you absolutely have to eat at Ti Choa in Serreta
- trying two local wines there, a red (unfiltered) and a white: Canjirão, both delicious
- driving across the 15km wide crater of an extinct volcano, now covered in a patchwork of different greens, dotted with black and white cows, and then driving up one side of the crater (Serra do Cume, 545m) to look down on it from above