Two months ago we booked an all day excursion through Viator for São Miguel Island and were quite excited about it. This was our final virgin visit of the cruise, and we wanted to make the most this 290 square mile island, which is a department of Portugal.
When we returned to the ship in Vigo two days ago, I received notification that our payment for that excursion would be charged to our credit card the next day. That was fine, but it did prompt me to look at the weather forecast for Ponta Delgada for the day we would be there. It was abysmal, a 100% chance of rain with heavy rain warnings. Ugh.
We had already looked at the map for our planned excursion, and knew we would be on twisty-turny coastal roads, which sounded extremely picturesque when we booked the excursion but not so much fun in a heavy rain. We decided to cancel before the payment was charged the next day. We would have had one additional day to cancel for a full refund, but I know too well that it’s easier to not pay in the first place than to chase after a refund due. An extra day to consider wouldn’t have mattered anyway; the forecast didn’t improve.
Sure enough, we awoke today to a grey fog with rain, though the forecast did call for improvement this afternoon. We lingered over breakfast in Snobatini’s, then moved to dry seats on the Horizon Terrace. The rain continued but lessened a little, and finally, about noon, we could start to see some clearing.
Friend Sherita had just been in Ponta Delgada on a HAL ship a couple of days earlier, and she had had brilliant weather for an island tour, but suggested to us a walk around town as an alternative. So we set to get some exercise and see what there was to see.
I was most fascinated by the art work on the pier next to a marina with hundreds of smaller boats and yachts, most of them sailboats. I knew São Miguel was known to be a stopping point for boats sailing across the Atlantic, much as Nuku Hiva is for Pacific crossings. In Ponta Delgada, sailors commemorate their crossing by painting their ship name on the pier, often accompanied by their own names and country of origin. I walked around looking for my favorite sailors, SV Delos, but didn’t see anything. I don’t specifically recall that they’ve been here, because they crossed to South America directly from Africa.
There were several floating Air BnB type boats in the marina.
A whopper of a ship 😆😆
The sun came out in full force by mid afternoon, and we joined a long line of guests and crew to re-board the ship. Once back on board, we headed to the Horizon Court Buffet for lunch (chicken fajita salad for me). We ran into Restaurant Manager Roxana up there and told her we wouldn’t be going to dinner in the Symphony Dining Room, and stayed up on deck through sailaway and sunset.
Megayacht Capricorn was berthed next to the Regal Princess
We were in port with the Fred Olson Bolette, which was formerly the HAL Amsterdam, which was much like the HAL Maasdam, which we loved. Fewer than 1400 passengers, it does unique itineraries to lesser visited ports. G observed, “I bet you’d love that ship”. How well he knows me.
It was so foggy this morning that we didn’t even realize there were mountains on this island until we returned to the ship this afternoon.
We had never even gotten cleaned up for the evening, so we took advantage of that to spend some time in a hot tub and skipped the lower decks altogether (and missed production show Fiera- shocker!).
We were already back in our cabin a couple of hours out of Ponta Delgada when Captain Traverso made an announcement into the cabins that there had been a medical emergency and a passenger had to be taken back to the island for care. That all took two or three hours to play out, and then we were on our way, with five days at sea to Antigua.
