Thursday, October 19, 2006

My dream trip to the Azores ( Sep 2004)

Picture 1: View from Horta Harbour (Faial) across to Pico
(click to enlarge)

Day 3 now, and things are gradually taking shape, at least in my head. But it may be a while before that's apparent to you, dear reader....... Be patient a little while longer.

So why the pictures of the Azores ? Well, they serve two purposes here. It began, you may recall, with me mentioning one of my life's passions, which is aerial photography. I was looking for a suitable reply to Sarah re the interesting and sometimes dramatic conjunction of land and sea, which we certainly have here on the Cote d'Azur. I then went to my photo file, and posted the picture of two misty islands, a long skinny one in the foreground, with awe-inspiring cliffs, and one in the background with an impressive volcanic peak.

As I told Sarah in the comments, the picture was taken two years ago on my "trip of a lifetime" to the Azores. It was to celebrate my 60th birthday. In case you didn't know, there are 9 islands in the Azores, all volcanic origin of course, which predictably gives some truly spectacular scenery ( I'll show more on a later date). My picture was taken on the flight between Faial and Terceira, (see lower of two pix above) skirting Pico island, which has the volcano of the same name, and then crossing the long narrow island of S. Jorge.

Note added 21 Oct. Picture 2 (map of flight path) had been deleted to free up space.

It was taken looking back across Jorge to Pico, so it's the tailplane, not the wing that you see in the previous post.

The upper of the two pictures above is Pico, as seen from Horta Harbour on Faial, the neighbouring island.

A narrow strait separates the two islands. Horta is world-famous among the transatlantic sailing fraternity, being one of the few places one can make landfall between Europe and the Americas. Sailors are allocated a bit of harbour wall on which they add their own colourful mural. You can just about make them out in Picture 1 above.

The two weeks we spent in the Azores were one of the most memorable trips of my life. There's so much to see, especially if, like me, you want to see somewhere that's so pristine and primeval in places. You'd think you were on a different planet when you see those crater lakes, especially on S. Miguel, and the dense lush carpet of green vegetation. More about the Azores on future postings. But say if you'd like to hear more right now ......

To end on a somewhat flippant note: I entered my blog name "Dreams and Daemons" into Google. I wanted to see whether it was original or not, or whether it had visibility yet in the blogosphere community. There was just a single reference, in fact. The phrase "dreams and daemons" appeared in an abstruse paper in the 1935 Journal of Philosophy. I knew I'd seen it before somewhere !

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

http://photos1.blogger.com/blogger/5964/3244/1600/100_0580.jpg

is one of these you?

Try http://alifeinthesouthoffrance.blogspot.com/
and scroll down.

sciencebod said...

Well, I've been to the site, Sarah. I'm glad that "Angela" enjoyed her day in Antibes. I don't recognize myself among the guys taking a break from their saxophoning duties, and my wife does all the shopping at the Marché Provençal (arguably the best market on the entire Riviera !).
I might be one of the pixellated blobs sunning themselves on the Gravette beach. But you'd never catch me going in for so much as a paddle, given the swarms of stinging jellyfish we've had this year.

I'll be adding my own pix of Antibes from time to time. Our decision to settle here some 4 years ago ticked another box under the heading "Dreams Realized" !

angela said...

Hi Colin,
listening to the rain on the window now those photos seem as if they're from a different planet!
I like Antibes very much and we did have a wonderful afternoon there.
Those photos of the Azores are lovely. Thanks for sharing,
Angela

sciencebod said...

Hi Angela

Nice to hear from you. The number of visitors to my site has just increased by 100% !

In fact I've been pulling a few more Azores pictures out my files this evening. Seeing as how you like what you've seen ( and you ain't seen nothing yet) then I'll put another one or two up. I can't attach pictues to a comment, can I ? so I'll put them up as a new post dedicated to "Antibes/Azores fan" !

Anonymous said...

Colin, try putting on a sitemeter, then you'll know how many visitors you're really getting and where they come from. It's fun!

sciencebod said...

Site meter ? I've had one for a while, Sarah. It's right at the bottom of the page. It showed over 200 hits last time I looked. But I shan't get carried away. A lot of those are the result of my own editing and re-editing. By the way, have you been to your latest blog posting to see my response to your "nutty granny" ?
feel free to delete it if I'm out of order there.

Fri 20 0ct 10.30 am French time

sciencebod said...

PS

Presumably you have a site-meter too. But it's not visible on my bowser (IE). But I see from your post on Colin Randall's blog that you are using Firefox, which is giving you problems in other departments (links etc). Both my links to you and CR work fine, as well as those I've tried in the reverse direction.

Oh my god, do please spare us all this geeky stuff. Hippo