Only fifty-odd miles away from São Miguel is the island of Santa Maria, the most southerly and most easterly of all the Azores. Boldly proclaimed as ‘The International Gateway to the Azores’, it has a large airport but virtually just a few places to stay. Travellers who arrive here tend to ignore Santa Maria and hurry on to neighbouring São Miguel.
It’s one of the smallest islands, only 37 square miles in area, with a total population of roughly 7,500. Although first to be claimed and colonized by the Portuguese, Santa Maria never acquired the relative prosperity of the larger islands, and has therefore less in the way of noble mansions, grand churches and other historic monuments. But it does not deserve to be ignored. If you can put up with the woefully inadequate hotel accommodation, you’ll be rewarded by a refreshing lack of commercial development, and most of all by an enchanting landscape of hills and valleys, forests and fields, tiny farming communities and secluded beaches.
As most visitors arrive at the airport, we’ll begin the tour there. Built by the Americans as an Air Force base in 1944, it only came into service in July 1945 and so was barely utilized in World War II. The USA handed it over to the Portuguese government in June 1946. Now this small island can boast the second best airport in the Azores, with three long runways (as opposed to Ponta Delgada’s one). SATA, the Azores’ own airline, inaugurated the inter-island service in June 1947 with a flight from São Miguel to Santa Maria, and now the airport has large transatlantic jets arriving from Europe and North America. It also has the swimming pool. This western area of the island, almost wholly taken up by the airport, is relatively flat and uninteresting in landscape.
Santa Maria reserves her charms for those who take the trouble to explore.