You can´t beat Sao Jorge Cheese

Whilst cruising, it is very easy to be seduced by the place you have stopped in - and your anchor grows roots. You make friends, the supermarket is "down the road", and there´s the "local pub"!


Luis came to supper onboard, then insisted we went for a beer. Sao Jorge is famed for its cheese, and we weren´t allowed to leave without some - the cafe owner, Jose Baltazar, insisted, and thrust a carrier bag into my hand.

Sao Jorge houses cling to the hill sides and cluster around the local church. Steep roads wind down the hills, linking farms and villages in a network of cobbled streets. We left at dawn with the Cory's shearwaters, their calls sounding like kazoos, carrying eerily across the still water. It was a full two hours before the sun crested the island and its full splendor could be enjoyed. The thick cumulus cloud nestling on the islands crest feeds the many waterfalls that cascade down the cliffs, their plunge pools the sea, but we sailed by, under a clear blue sky, with risso's dolphins, pilot whales, and later, common dolphins for company.

Terciera, the eastern most island in the archipelago, is the "big smoke". It's busy, and its very Portuguese. We have come for the Festival of Sanjoaninas - the bull fighting festival!