Santa Maria Island, Azores , 3/30/2015, National Geographic Explorer
Aboard the
National Geographic Explorer
Azores, Madeira & Beyond
Santa Maria, home to the smallest bird in Europe, Santa Maria Goldcrest (Regulus regulus sanctaemariae), was the first island to be discovered by the Portuguese, and its main town, Vila do Porto, the oldest village in the Azores, dating back to the 15th century.
Welcomed by a local folklore music group, we started our day dancing the Azorean traditional songs. Circling the island within the rustic landscapes of lush vegetation we came across tiny villages, the houses with colored frames painted around the windows and along their base. These and the elegant white chimneys give the island a picturesque air reminding us of the first settler’s origin Algarve and Alentejo regions, back in the south mainland Portugal.
At the Chapel of Nossa Senhora dos Anjos, where Columbus and his companions attended mass on their way back from his first voyage to America, the signs of being in a Portuguese territory were evident: the pavements made up of limestone and basalt blocks decorated with caravel designs, the tiles inside the chapel and the half-barrel tiles on the roofs.
On our way back at São Lourenço Bay viewpoint, in the northwest side of the island, we discovered a unique landscape with cliff sides formed by a volcanic semi-crater, covered in terraced vineyards. The vines are divided by walls of basalt stone, which run the length of the cliff down to the beach of pale sand and clear water.
By lunch a full Portuguese buffet with many exquisite traditional details, different types of enchidos/chouriços, piles of traditional cheeses from all the nine islands of Azores, and a wonderful rice pudding cooked Portuguese-style leaving smooth, sweet, velvet taste thanks to the use of egg yolks and cinnamon.
The local history is full of tales of pirates and privateers invading the island. This island has become a compulsory stopping point not only during the times of discovery but also, in modern times, for transatlantic flights, giving Santa Maria a very important role in its prime development times.
En route to Madeira we had the company of a couple of fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) and Bryde’s whales (Balaenoptera edeni) sailing along with National GeographicExplorer on a perfect Adeus (goodbye) to these unforgettable islands.
Madalena was born and raised in Portugal. Her childhood was spent in Belem, surrounded by Portuguese maritime history, always dreaming about exploring the oceans. Her love for nature has led her to study biology and later to take a Master’s in manage...
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The sun's crepuscule had yet to breach the horizon over Cadiz when we disembarked for our exploration of Seville, the fourth largest city in Spain and home to an impressive historical, cultural, and archeological legacy. We were eager to get a start on the day, but it was a time in the morning when most Spaniards were still sleeping. This is, after all, a late-night culture. Spaniards are notorious for eating their dinner at around 11 p.m., sometimes later, and showing up at a restaurant anytime before 10 is a sure sign that you are a foreigner. Traditionally, businesses would shut down during the scorching afternoon heat to enable people to eat lunch, the largest meal of the day, followed by a rejuvenating siesta. While many storefronts are still shuttered between 2-5 p.m. in Spain, few still take the time to actually sleep, leading to a country suffering from mass sleep deprivation. So it's no wonder there were very few people on the streets of Cadiz as our buses wound their way through the early-morning streets and headed off towards Seville. Cadiz was established by the Phoenicians and is thought to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in Western Europe. Ancient stonewalls, abandoned Roman aqueducts and other archeological marvels exist alongside modern apartment buildings and a shiny, new, glass-walled soccer stadium. We passed the tobacco factory where the main character in the Bizet opera Carmen worked (my favorite version of this story of passion, love, and betrayal is the Carlos Saura film Carmen , which is filled with unparalleled flamenco dancing and music). As we crossed the Bay of Cadiz we could see the still-unfinished La Pepa Bridge, its roadway hanging precariously in the air with large gaps of open space. It was supposed to have been finished in 2012, but the economic crisis in Spain and the usual bureaucratic delays have meant the bridge won't be finished until this year at the earliest. This is, after the all, the country where Gaudi's Sagrada Familia church has been under construction in Barcelona since 1882 and there's no firm date yet on when it will be finished. By the time we reached the outskirts of Cadiz, the sun had risen, giving the misty haze settling over the olive trees and grape vines a mystical, otherworldly character. As we traveled down the highway, our tour guide's lilting voice faded into the background as I began to imagine the strains of Spanish flamenco guitar plucking their way across the landscape. We passed an exit sign for the town of Algeciras and I understood why this ghostly image had come to mind…this small city in the province of Cadiz was the birthplace of Francisco Gustavo Sanchez Gomes, who thankfully shortened his name to Paco de Lucia. On December 21, 1947, just minutes from where we were now driving, history's greatest flamenco guitarist was born, a man whose virtuosity helped bring flamenco the mainstream respect it had been missing. Paco de Lucia was raised in a musical family, his father was a guitarist, and by the age of five, Paco was undergoing rigorous training in the mysterious art of flamenco. While all of Paco's brothers played, it was clear very early that young Paco was a prodigy. He appeared on the radio at age 11 and recorded his first album when he was 14. His 1970s recordings with flamenco singer Camarón de la Isla are considered the greatest classics of the genre. Over the years Paco expanded from traditional flamenco and began adding influences of jazz and classical music. His 1981 live album, Friday Night in San Francisco , recorded with guitarists John McLaughlin and Al Di Meola, is one of my personal favorite live albums of all time. This unbelievable performance by three magicians of the guitar will leave your jaw on the floor. Paco de Lucia died of a heart attack on February 25 th , 2014 while vacationing with his family in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. He was posthumously awarded the Latin GRAMMY for Album of the Year later that year. As we drove across the Andalusian countryside, Paco de Lucia's most famous song, "Entre Dos Aguas" echoed in my head like the moaning of ghost. After an hour or so driving through the Spanish countryside, we arrived in Seville, entering the city via a grand boulevard lined by dramatic buildings built for the ill-fated Ibero-American Exposition of 1929. Intended to show the world that, even though it had lost all of its colonies in the Americas, Spain was still a powerful world force, the world's fair proved to be a boondoggle. It did not result in floods of tourists, as was hoped, and it happened to come on the cusp of the global economic decline after the Wall Street crash, not to mention the Spanish Civil War, which began in 1936. The impressive buildings from that event still remain, culminating in the grandest of them all, the Plaza de España. An enormous pavilion built in a half circle to honor the Islamic influence on the Iberian Peninsula, the Plaza de España is unquestionably impressive. It has been a location in the films Lawrence of Arabia and Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones , among others. We spent some time wandering around the immense courtyard. We then headed over to Santa Cruz, the former Jewish quarter of the old city. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, an auspicious year in Spanish history that also included the defeat of the last bastion of the Islamic Moors in Granada, not to mention Columbus's unintended "discovery" of the Americas. The tiny winding streets of the neighborhood are very picturesque, designed to maximize shade in the hot climate. No signs of the former inhabitants remain; synagogues were long ago destroyed or converted into churches. Apparently, there has been an effort to allow the descendants of Sephardic Jews (Jews who were expelled from Spain) to reclaim citizenship in Spain. Our meanderings took us to the Alcázar, the royal palace and one of Seville's top attractions. Our Lindblad connections helped us skip right past a line that extended for hundreds of feet and enter the palace grounds. Divided into small groups led by expert local guides, we learned about the fascinating history of a building that looks as if it were built to house Islamic royalty, when in fact it was constructed long after the last Moors were expelled. This blend of Islamic and Christian architecture is called mudéjar , and Alcázar is perhaps is finest example. If you can't make it to Seville to see the impressive building in person, just check out the upcoming season of Game of Thrones , which uses it extensively as a set. By now we had worked up a healthy appetite, so we strolled over to the Roblas Placentines restaurant for a meal of tapas, paella, and a heart-stopping sweet desert, with the excellent flamenco guitarists Jualma and Bernardo playing in the background. Our final excursion was to the Seville Cathedral, the largest Gothic cathedral and the third largest church in the world. It’s an awe-inspiring place even today, so one can only imagine what an impression it must have made on visitors when it was completed in the early 1500s, after a 100-year construction period. Our visit to Seville happened to correspond to the Semana Santa celebrations, and the floor of the Cathedral was covered with wax droplets from the throngs of people that had paraded through the site in recent days. We spotted a few member of the numerous processions that take place during this week walking down the streets in their pointed hats that look ominously similar to Ku Klux Klan uniforms, although there is no connection whatsoever. It still was a little off-putting to see little plastic figurines in the Cathedral gift shop that might get you some awkward reactions if you brought them back to the U.S. In addition to the architecture, the Cathedral houses an extraordinary art collection, one of the most impressive organs I have ever seen, and an elaborately decorated nave whose carved panels depicting scenes from the life of Christ rises to the sky. The Cathedral also houses about 150 grams of the remains of Christopher Columbus, held in a massive tomb commemorating a man who changed the course of human history (whether that was for the better is an issue of argument in many parts of the world). Our visit to the Cathedral marked the end of our visit to Amazing Seville. We boarded the buses and headed back to the ship. It was a brief but magical taste of this historically and culturally rich city. Every time I hear the sounds of flamenco, I will think back on my journey to this very memorable destination. Lest you think that Andalusian music is only flamenco, this region of Spain has also spawned some other musical phenomena that have taken the world by storm: "The Macarena" and Julio Iglesias. Let's just say weddings would never be the same without Andalucía.
Both the Azores and Madeira had been claimed by Portugal before the close of the second decade of the 15th century. By the close of the century, Bartholomew Diaz had rounded the Cape of Good Hope, Vasco da Gama had followed in his wake to reach Calicut on the Indian subcontinent, and Pedro Cabral had sighted the coast of South America. Following the first Columbus voyages to the New World, sponsored by Spain, territorial rivalry between two European powers went to arbitration: Pope Alexander VI adjudicated between the rival monarchies of Portugal and Spain, with Spain winning territory west of an imaginary longitudinal line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, an archipelago claimed by Portugal in 1447, so that today Brazil is Portuguese-speaking whereas the remainder of South America speaks Spanish. Portugal was propelled in the course of that fateful 15th century from a poor country on the Atlantic fringe of a European continent that had known centuries of Mediterranean trade, to become a global maritime power that could turn its back on a Mediterranean commercial world that would slip slowly but inexorably into decline. Spain’s New World colonies traded in gold and silver, from great mines like Potosi; Portugal developed plantation agriculture based on African slave labor. Of the 11 million Africans transported from the Old World to the New, some four million were transported in Portuguese ships to Brazil. This compared with the half a million African slaves transported to eth American colonies. Since Columbus’ second voyage of settlement in 1493 there has been a massive exchange of flora and fauna between the Old World and the New; there are now two Africas on either side of the Atlantic Ocean, a phenomenon unique in human history. The waters through which we have been sailing today have been wonderfully calm. At breakfast time a few of us were lucky enough to see a group of ten migrating great herons fly across our bow; we have looked down on migrating turtles and met a pod of dolphins. But half a millennium ago these waters witnessed momentous developments in human history, ushering in our increasingly globalized world. A series of presentations during the day reviewed the Portuguese world we have left behind us and prepared us for the climax of Semana Santa in Seville, our Spanish destination tomorrow.
Our second morning in Funchal, the main town of Madeira and home to 40% of its population, so named after the sweet-smelling fennel found growing there by Portuguese settlers in the early 15 th century. While some enjoyed a leisurely morning around town, the rest of us had our minds on higher things. Light had just broken as our bus climbed up the unbelievable switchbacks out of Funchal. The town has grown dramatically in the last 30 years, with thousands of small, red-tiled houses clinging precariously to the mountainsides, perching among the narrow terraces where bananas and vines are still grown. As we rose higher and higher, this urban landscape gave way to woodlands of eucalyptus, pines, and mimosa. At about 2,400 feet of altitude, the cloud cover that had loomed overhead was now below us, like a fluffy sea of cotton wool. Still the narrow road wound its way upwards in sharp bends sometimes around sheer precipices. Eventually we left the treeline below, and found ourselves approaching the backbone of the island, and a breathtaking viewpoint at Pico de Arieiro at 5,900 feet high. Although a successful conservation project is seeing the endangered Zino’s petrel breeding annually here in growing numbers, it was the distinctive squawk of the red partridge, unseen among the sparse mountaintop vegetation that greeted us. Madeira’s extraordinary landscape of agricultural terraces, or ‘ poios’ , is irrigated by a 1250-mile-long system of manmade channels carrying rainwater from the mountains, known as ‘levadas’. Our next destination was a delightful 3km walk along one of the disused branches of the levada of Serra do Faial, through part of the precious native Laurissilva forest. Robins and blackbirds sang among the laurels, a firecrest was spotted, and at the final viewpoint at the Balcōes belvedere, a flock of colourfully-marked chaffinches entertained the walkers. We celebrated the end of our walk in traditional style with a ‘ poncha’ —a drink of lemon juice, honey, and rum. As we returned to sea level, we could appreciate the conservation issues Madeira faces in dealing with the impacts of introduced species of trees, plants and animals, and desertification of the landscape. But all too soon it was time to bid farewell to this fascinating island and begin our journey towards Spain. Calm waters on the short passage to the Ilhas Desertas provided a perfect backdrop for a large group of Cory’s shearwaters, along with a few of the smaller Manx shearwaters, not to mention one or two feeding fin whales, now quite a familiar sight on this voyage. One last look at the spectacular volcanic geology of Islas Grandes, product of a classic strata volcano with its stripes of ash and lava shot through with dykes, then out to the open sea once more.
