Essential advice for travelling to the Azores

Essential advice for travelling to the Azores

Hello everyone! Today I'm bringing you my final post about San Miguel, an island which is part of the archipelago, the Azores. In this entry, I want to give you a few pieces of advice, and I wish I knew about some of them before visiting these islands in the middle of the Atlantic, so here they are! Let's go!

Transport

First of all, I want to start by saying that the best way of getting round the island of San Miguel is by car. It gives you so much more liberty. You don't have to depend on any sort of timetable and you can plan your route as and when you like. The public transport on the islands is pretty scarce. There aren't many bus services, and they take a long time. It's logical, as there isn't a high demand for it.

As it's like this, we decided to rent a car specifically with the company Ilha Verde. Truth is that all the companies we'd see on the internet were cheap, but we chose this one because it was recommended. We rented the car for 7 days and it was €83. 45 in total, with insurance included. It's incredible how cheap it was. When we saw the company prices, we thought it was a scam or fraud, but no. The price really was that low. We were accustomed to the prices of Bratislava, where it normally costs €40 per day, so that's why we didn't trust it.

Something different about these companies is that they have an excess charge. Even though it seems like a deposit, it's actually not. I would advice you to inform yourself of how much each company takes from you. With Ilha Verde it was quite a lot, around €1200 I seem to remember. But, has we had insurance, it didn't worry us too much.

The good thing is that there's a company branch right in the Ponta Delgada airport, so we were there not long after getting off the plane. We got the car and went directly to our hostel, so we saved ourselves taxi money.

With regards to the roads, the majority are in a good state and pretty well signposted. There tend to be free places to park all over the island. But, the only inconvenient thing is that the cows often get in the way. It's very fun. We had to stop several times to let them pass, very peacefully. In the Azores, wherever you go, wherever you are, there will always be cows. In fact, a lot of people say that the islands have more cows than people. And I for one believe it. They're everywhere!

When it comes to transport to be able to get from one island to the other, the majority of people recommend going by plane. By boat, it takes nearly a whole day and it's not worth losing this amount of time. We thought that our visit to Sao Miguel was enough for the 8 days we were there, so we decided not to visit any other islands. Although some like Flores or Terceira look really good.

The flights

Speaking about the other islands, one thing we discovered was that if you fly from Portugal, you can get a free flight to another island in the Azores as long as it hasn't been 24 hours between the flights. This is a great idea if you want to visit another island. The flight will be free and you'd save yourself money on a plane ticket! Like I've told you, despite mulling over this idea, in the end we decided to not do it because although a ticket to another island (like Terceira or Flores) from Ponta Delgada would be free, in the end we would have to pay for another ticket to get back to Ponta Delgada again. So, we had second thoughts. Even so, if you're going for a longer time and Sao Miguel isn't the only island that interests you, I'd recommend doing this trip.

App: Spotazores

Without a doubt, this is one of the best pieces of advice I can give you. And it's about an app called SpotAzores. There's a free version, and even an extension if you pay. But the free version is more than enough. There are webcams situated at the most strategic points across all the Azores islands. It's so useful because if you click on the place you want to go, for example "Sete Cidades", you can see what the weather's like. In our case, we checked the webcam at Miradouro do Rei every day to see if there was a clear sky, and it never was so we decided not to go. Without this app, we definitely would had gone there a few times to check whether we could see anything, and we would have been a let down every time. We also checked how the weather was in Ferraria a few times, which is where the thermal baths I talked about are. So, it's a place you'd need to visit with good weather. This app was such a big help to me on this trip, especially as the weather in the Azores is unpredictable. It's better to check what the weather's like at the different points of the islands before going. It also recommends restaurants, although we didn't bother looking.

Windy Maps

Speaking of apps, I have to recommend Windy Maps to you not just for this trip, but for travelling in general. It's especially good if you like hiking routes. Google Maps is a good app, but at the end of the day it's a bit too basic and incomplete. A lot of the time the satellite option isn't good enough to actually show the proper routes in this area. In comparison, Windy Maps has all the available hiking routes marked, and the best part is that the app works without connection! Because of this, it's very important to download the maps you need of where you are beforehand. This means it takes less time, so make sure to download them in advance for whenever you'd need them. This app really helped us at some points, such as when we were a bit lost in the middle of a forest, near Lagoa do Congro, and we had to find the right route to get us there. Without a shadow of a doubt, it's a great app that you must download.

What clothes to wear

With regards to clothes, I guess what I'm about to tell you won't be anything surprising nor revealing, but you'll need every single article of clothing you can think of. I don't know if you know this, but the Azores locals say that you can have all four seasons of the year in just one day. This means that you have to bring every kind of garment you have. The essentials: a raincoat for the rain, long trousers and a jacket for the windy areas, a bikini or bathing suit for the thermal baths (or to go swimming in the sea if you go during the summer). And, the most important thing, a good walking jacket which is a requisite on Sao Miguel. I feel obliged to mention this piece of advice, which is use one of your older swimsuits that you don't really care about when you go to the hot springs as the water has a high iron content, which means it might stain them an orange colour. If it does stain, you only have to scrub it well for a while for it to come out. And by the way, don't forget your flip flops for the hot springs and the showers in the changing rooms.

Sleeping at Ponta Delgada

We decided to stay in Ponta Delgada which is the capital and therefore there are more options when it comes to accommodation and restaurants. We stayed in a hostel called Azores Dream Hostel which was in the centre. We had a room only for the two of us, but there were also rooms with 8 beds which were cheaper. The good thing is that in this hostel, we had free breakfast included. Fruit, bread and butter, ham, cheese, milk, tea, coffee, cereal, etc. Also we could use the kitchen whenever we wanted so we saved a lot of money as we always cooked there. We bought food in the supermarket and kept it in the fridge with a sticker with our name on it, and we cooked it during the evening. Labelling your food is important because one day we forgot to do so and the following day, we woke up and a random woman was eating our food we prepared the day before.

We love the hostel option because we got to know very interesting people. We made friends with an Italian guy who came with us for the rest of the trip. He was called Carlo, and we got along very well with him. We also got to know a Russian mother and daughter, who happened to be travelling around Spain for the summer. There's always someone new in the hostel and we always had someone to talk to. I really like this kind of atmosphere. Apart from all this, I would recommend going to a hostel because we had the option to clean our clothes in the washing machine, which was free the first time you used it. So, we made the most of this so we didn't have to do it when we got home. Also, they even gave us our clothes back ironed.

Louvre Michaelense

With regards to Ponta Delgada, there are a decent amount of restaurants on offer, and they're normally more sophisticated than at the other points of the island. I would recommend for you to go to Louvre Michaelense. It's not a restaurant, but a beautiful cafe. It's decorated with books you can buy as souvenirs. I liked this cafe a lot, and we went there several times for a snack. They had some bowls of yoghurt with fruit of the season, and granola which were really tasty.

If we fancied something savoury, we opted for a piece of toast with guacamole and a poached egg. It wasn't expensive, and the service was really good. It's in the centre as well, so you can't miss it.

Travelling during low season

Despite thinking that the islands would be amazing during high season too, I'm sure that it would be too crowded and the prices would sky rocket. We went in February and we enjoyed it a lot. It's a great experience to be able to go to the hot springs when it's quite chilly outside. I don't know what it would be like during the summer, because despite the weather being practically the same all year round, it does get hotter so the thermal baths lose their appeal. On the other hand, when it's summer, the sea is far more appealing, which is a plus. In short, travelling there during either season has its advantages, but I will always remember travelling during off season.

Eating local food

I have to say that food in the Azores is really good. For example, I recommend the butter because it's so cheap, of good quality and you can support local businesses, as well as it tasting amazing. We also made the most of where we were by trying local fruit such as their very own custard apples or pineapples. The pineapples were super flavourful, I loved them. And finally, go to the tea factory Cha Gorreana, which I talked to you about in a previous post. So, if you're fans of tea, you have to try it.

And that's it for my advice to help your plan your trip to the Azores. I hope that this has been useful for you. Thank you for reading, and this means we've finally come to the end of my Sao Miguel chapter. See you for the next post, which will have even more content. Bye!

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