There’s a score of easy excursions from Ponta Delgada through the peaceful green countryside and around the coast, visiting dozens of small towns and villages that are alike in their quiet charm. As you explore the island, you get a sense of travelling back in time to a pastoral age, an age of innocence. The hydrangea-lined roads are almost empty except for the occasional farmer and his donkey cart. The fields are full of lush-looking crops, sometimes dominated by a windmill (some still functioning), and the Micaelenses pursue their agricultural business with a gentle, good-humoured curiosity as the tourist speeds through.
Heading east out of Ponta Delgada the main road leads along the coast to Sao Roque, the Miradouro de Sao Roque offering fine views down to the rocky islet off Sao Roque itself, called Rosto do Cao (Dog’s Head), and east towards Lagoa. A mile or so on is the golden sand, beach of Praia do Pointlo, one of the best beaches in São Miguel. Lagoa is a small town some 7 miles from Ponta Delgada with several handsome monuments including a 17th-century monastery, Convento dos Frades (rebuilt in the 18th century after an eruption in 1652) with a beautiful garden. There’s also a good public swimming pool built among the rocks just below town.
Following the coast the next place of interest is Caloura amid small fields and vineyards reaching right to the edge of black lava cliffs, one of the island’s chief wine-producing areas. Now the road becomes rather twisty, following the sinuous coastline towards Agua d’Alto with a popular blackish sandy beach, and to the nearby town of Vila Franca do Campo. Founded in 1444, Vila Franca was once the capital of São Miguel and still possesses some interesting old chuches and mansions including the Igreja de São Miguel, first ‘mother church’ on the island. Dating from the 15th century, it was destroyed by an earthquake in 1522 but rebuilt stone for stone exactly as before. Yet more amazing is the small church dedicated to Santo Andre (St Andrew) with a positively ecstatic interior of azulejo panels dating from the 17th century and an exuberantly gilded high altar, in this church lie the remains of one of the leading figures of Sao Miguel’s earliest days, Rui Gonsalves da Camara, son of Joao Gonsalves Zarco who discovered Madeira. And off the town lies the small islet, Ilheu de Vila Franca. It is a sunken crater forming a superb, perfectly circular natural swimming pool protected from Atlantic breakers by the crater’s steep rocky rim. In summer at least there is usually a small boat available to ferry visitors across from Vila Franca’s small quay.
From Furnas there are several very pleasant excursions round the east of the island. Due south to the fishing village of Ribeira Quente, south-east to Povoacio, São Miguel’s first settlement, and thence around the dramatic north-east coast to the picturesque small town of Nordeste. The south-east coast suffered particularly badly from volcanic and seismic disturbances throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, and the inhabitants of Povoacao received another kind of shock in 1811 when a submarine eruption produced a tenth Azorean island just a few kilometres off the coast. The island was named Eta Sabrina, but there are few records as to its size or descriptions of its appearance. All we know for sure is that it had completely vanished by the end of 1812.
But leaving Furnas by the north-west route, the traveller has a chance to stop and look back over the fertile valley as the road climbs out of the crater, and one recommended detour follows a left turn (near the golf course) to the summit of Pico do Ferro, its sheer flowery flanks falling away to the green Lagoa das Furnas. The main road eventually reaches the north coast and heads west towards Ribeira Grande, an attractive old town spanning the ‘Big River’ from which it gets its name. Among the abundance of historic buildings in Ribeira Grande, one church stands out, the Igreja do Espirito Santo (16th century, rebuilt mid 17th century), its facade constituting the height of baroque extravagance. From Ribeira Grande a good wide road crosses the island to Ponta Delgada about 14 miles away, while a minor road heads south-east into the hills to the beautiful Lagoa do Fogo (Fire Lake). This lagoon lies at the bottom of a very deep crater, a peaceful green corner very much favoured by campers and weekend picnickers in summer, despite the long trail down from the road, partly because of the fine sandy beach to one side of the lake.
