Azores

Bom Dia from the Azores

After four days in Madeira, we landed in São Miguel, Azores, the island where my father’s parents lived before they emigrated to the U.S. My parents visited São Miguel in February 2000, which my mother wrote about in a small notebook I took on this trip.

The Azores has nine major islands in the Atlantic — about a thousand miles from Portugal and 2,400 miles from the U.S. As a child, I believed that’s where Atlantis was located.

Our daughter Emily joined Zack, Julia, Brian and us, arriving from Lisbon at the airport in Ponta Delgada within minutes of each other. I already posted about the food we ate. Let me share some of the highlights.

FARMS: While Madeira’s number one industry is tourism, it is agriculture on São Miguel, including fishing, of course. Yes, tourists come here, but they are not the center of attention. I saw large fields and herds of cows. It was corn season, as it was back in Western Mass. where we live. We visited a pineapple plantation, which grows the fruit in greenhouses. The island has a tea plantation — we brought back bags of green tea grown there.

FURNAS: The five of us rented a house in Furnas, located in the eastern most of three active trachytic volcanoes. (That was the view from the back porch.) It is a charming village, where people get bread delivered in the morning in bags tied to their front door. It was an easy walk down to the active part of the village where there were restaurants and shops. Coming back meant trudging up a hill. Still, the streets were wider than those in Madeira and not as steep.

The village’s center, where we were staying, had springs and geysers of varying temperatures and chemical compositions, some much too hot to touch. People who lived there used the hot springs for cooking, including bags of corn. There were pipes where you could collect mineral-rich water, even cold. The air from their steam smelled of sulphur and iron. 

The village has a hot springs spa, which we enjoyed one day.

HYDRANGEAS: The bushes grew all along the roads, a massive and impressive display of blue blossoms.

TILE WORK: I enjoyed the intricate tile work, often done as murals such as the one in the photo above. Also notable was the intricate stonework on walkways like the one in Ponta Delgada shown above. 

PORTUGAL VS. SCOTLAND: Brian was excited that we would be there when Portugal played Scotland in a UEFA Nations League game. We watched the opener in a small bar then saw the rest at the restaurant that broadcasted it on a wide screen TV. Cristiano Ronaldo, the football aka soccer superstar who grew up in Madeira, scored the winning goal.

SUNRISE AT NORDESTE: One morning, Hank and I got up before dawn to accompany Emily to Nordeste to watch the sunrise. To get a full view of the sunrise you need to either hike or drive down an insanely steep road (a sign at the top warns about driving). Emily, who snapped that photo above, walked farther than us.

MEN OUTSIDE COFFEE SHOPS AND BARS: It was common to see men smoking, gabbing, and drinking on tables outside coffee shops and bars. As in Madeira, people smoked openly in public.

AGUA DE PAU: This village was the former home for my grandparents. We attempted to visit the church Nossa Senhora dos Anjos (Our Lady of Angels), but it was locked. My parents attempted a visit three times, according to my mother’s travel diary. A feast honoring Nossa Senhora dos Anjos is held at the bottom of the street in Fairhaven, Mass., where I grew up. Four men from the village, grateful for making it safely to the U.S., had a life-sized statue of Mary carved from one piece of wood. The 700-pound statue is carried by men during a parade. My father was one of those men, and now my brother Tony is. I was sorry I couldn’t see inside the church, but I slipped my late mother’s memorial card in the door.

CATS: Unlike dogs, cats seemed welcome in restaurants and coffee shops. Of course, they are useful animals that help to keep down the rodent population. (We saw lots of bait stations in black plastic boxes.) But Hank, who is more than fond of the animal, seemed to attract them. When we ate lunch one afternoon, the table we chose had a cat sleeping on a chair. It woke up and climbed onto Hank’s lap. The cat stayed there throughout his meal, much to Hank’s delight as you can see above.

BEACHES: São Miguel has more than 20 volcanic, black sand beaches. Zack went swimming among the high waves at Ribera Grande, a popular place for surfers. We discovered the best beach in Agua de Pau on our way to the airport. Zack, who had brought along his bathing suit, took a swim and then let it to Hank.

MEETING PEOPLE WITH MY LAST NAME: My first last name is Medeiros, in which the ‘s’ is pronounced in the Azores as if it has an ‘h’ after it. I met several people with that last name, many of who had relatives in Massachusetts cities like Fall River. I learned later from my brother that my grandparents’ last name might have been Mattos, but was changed by immigration officials.

BUTTER: I forgot to mention the butter of Azores in my last post on food. Made from the milk of local cows, it is the best butter ever. I froze two large blocks, and when we flew back, I wrapped them in plastic inside my suitcase. I am saving them for special occasions.

THE END BUT NOT REALLY: Did I see and experience enough when I was in the Azores and Madeira? Hardly. But it made me excited to revisit, to explore more where my family came from, perhaps even to find family although I know many of them moved to other continents such as Africa and South America. I have been practicing Portuguese although many people speak English. Eu retornarei.

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Uncategorized

Bom Dia from Madeira

The roosters began crowing around 3 a.m. They kept it up as that first morning’s light grew, stirring the barking dogs in the neighborhood. Then the church bells started ringing on the hour and half hour. Bom dia from Funchal, Madeira.

I was on my first trip back to Europe after a very long time, thanks to our son Zack who generously bought Hank and I tickets on Azores Airlines. He came along with his sister, Julia and her friend, Brian. Julia handled finding us a short-term rental and car. This was the first leg. Next, we would fly to San Miguel in the Azores, where our daughter, Emily would join us.

Visiting these Portuguese islands has special significance because of my family’s origins there.

Today, tourism is the number one industry in Madeira. The tile-roofed and stuccoed-wall homes tucked into this island of volcanic origin, its tropical vegetation, and the ocean beyond are stunning. Madeira, only 360 miles from North Africa’s coast, is 34 miles long and 14 miles wide. Ruivo Peak tops at 6,106 feet — one of the destinations Zack, who likes challenges, ran on the island.

As we walked around Funchal that first day, servers, obviously recognizing us as tourists, waved menus to lure us into one of the city’s many restaurants. Friendly staff served us seafood and coffee. I had learned enough Portuguese to greet people politely and show my appreciation, but everyone we met spoke English.

Street scene in Funchal, Madeira.

But Madeira wasn’t a draw for tourists during the early 20th century when so many people, including my mother’s parents left for the U.S. (My father’s parents came from the Azores.) The island’s people were impoverished and there were economic opportunities elsewhere, such as New Bedford, Mass. with its textile and fishing industries. Grandmother Angela, or vovó as we called her, was 16 when she came by ship with her older sister. She met my grandfather Manuel, avô, who came from the village of Gaulo. Both worked in the textile mills and had a house with enough land to raise vegetables, grapes for wine, and hay for their goats.

That first day we explored Funchal’s center. A point of interest was a museum for Cristiano Ronaldo, the superstar football aka soccer player from Madeira who is a forward on the Portugal national team and Al-Nassr FC. Julia and Brian wanted to get shirts, especially since the Portugal team would be playing Scotland in a few days.

(I give kudos to Brian who managed driving a rental car that accommodated five people through the incredibly steep, narrow, and curvy streets of Funchal without a mishap.)

This trip, staying in a comfortable rental and eating seafood in restaurants, was a far cry from my first trip in Europe, when I hitchhiked, traveled on the money I had made washing dishes, and was taken in by perfect strangers. Someday I may write about that experience. But this trip was special, spending time with family exploring these Portuguese islands. For the next few posts, I will share my observations. Obrigada.

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Memoir

Los federales let us go

In a recent post, I shared a story of how we managed to get out of a jam in Mexico when our VW van toppled into a brush-filled ravine. Now, let me tell you about how we escaped being arrested by los federales.

In the mid-’70s, Hank and I, new in our relationship, and my daughter, Sarah, only 2, wandered around Mexico in our vintage VW camper van we named Rosalita. (The photo above was the one on Hank’s passport he obtained before we left.) We decided to settle for a while in San Cristóbal de las Casas located in Chiapas, a southern state in that country. We had delivered a gift a friend wanted us to bring her brother and decided this would be a good place to stay a while.

I don’t recall how we did it or what we paid, but we rented a small house on the outskirts. The house had water, but the toilet drained into a backyard trench that didn’t work well. I used a gas camp stove to cook our meals, and because of the rats, we kept our food locked in a sturdy case in the VW. We could hear rats running across the tin roof at night, and Hank kept a flashlight and hammer next to the futon we used on the floor to kill them. There wasn’t any furniture, not even a chair, except for a woven hammock we strung beneath the courtyard’s porch.

Every day we walked to the mercado, usually stopping at a café in the town’s center. We met a few other gringos, including a friendly man who was our guide as we traveled to indigenous villages in the mountains. He also taught us some basic Spanish. We also met a family of hippie types who rented a large house in town and hung out there a couple of times.

Interestingly, locals sometimes thought I was Mexican, thanks to the looks I inherited from my Portuguese ancestors, and would comment I was lucky to have found a gringo.

One day on a walk to the mercado, Hank and I were approached by a young man dressed in what I would describe as fake hippie garb and who asked us if we wanted to buy marijuana. No thanks, we told him. We didn’t smoke, which was the truth. We also noticed the same day another man, older, who wore one of those fringe suede jackets, driving a dirty, beat-up American-made car. It got even curiouser when we noticed those two talking on a side street like they were sharing a secret.

A night or two later, after Hank pulled into a Pemex gas station, our van was surrounded by armed federales. I recognized the man with the fringe suede jacket was among them. We were told to leave the van, so they could search it.

We had been warned that whole American families were being arrested, and then they had to pay a ransom to get out of prison. That is what we were told happened to the family who rented that big house by the way.

I held Sarah as we watched the federales dig through our stuff. We didn’t own anything illegal, but perhaps they would plant something. I knew this was a serious situation. 

But, instead, they let us go.

Hank and I were relieved as we drove away. We hadn’t done anything illegal in this country, but we decided it was time to return to the U.S. So, we packed up and left the next morning in the VW van that had brought us here.

Once again, good luck had been on our side.

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