Day 15: Flores to Ponta Delgada

We had a flight booked from Flores to Ponta Delgada this afternoon, marking the start of our long journey home. That wasn't until 17.25 though, so we still had most of the day on Flores. We had to check out of our accommodation at 10am and the weather looked quite cloudy inland at that point, so rather than try and drive across the island we decided to head down to Fajã Grande for another walk by the coast.

It's always lovely to walk by the coast but it's extra special when you can see waterfalls too

We walked past the waterfall of Poço do Bacalhau, which we'd climbed up the wet path to the other day. 

But there were several other waterfalls coming down the cliffs as well.

We followed a path around the coast which enabled us to look up at them.

Such beautiful waterfalls

And of course there were some nice views out to sea too.

Once we'd finished admiring the falls we jumped in the car, drove across the very cloudy middle of the island to Santa Cruz das Flores, then drove northwards on the one main road on the island we hadn't explored so far. This road followed the coast which we'd sailed along yesterday on our boat trip to Corvo.

We sailed through the middle of those rocks yesterday!

The most northerly village on the island is called Ponta Delgada.

It's a little bit smaller than the main town of Ponta Delgada on São Miguel; this Ponta Delgada only has a population of 280 people.

Just a little bit beyond the village of Ponta Delgada is the lighthouse of Ponta do Albernaz.

From the lighthouse we drove back down the coast for a while, before heading inland to see whether the weather had cleared up at all over the highest parts of the island. It still seemed to be quite cloudy so we didn't hold out great hopes of seeing the crater lakes, but it felt like it was worth one last try! Once we were in the middle of the island, we pulled over into a parking area between the two lakes of Lagoa Seca and Lagoa Comprida.

There was a signposted trail leading to a viewpoint. Admittedly the view didn't look too promising, but we decided to give it a go.

As with everywhere on the Azores, it was very green here

Not much sign of a lake though!

We kept peering over the edge where we thought the lake was supposed to be and suddenly we got a glimpse!

We carried on along the viewpoint trail in the hope that the weather might improve a bit and we'd see more...

...but we didn't really. At this point it had just started raining, so we decided to turn around and give up. This was the photo of me with the lake that we took for the blog  

But no sooner had we decided to give up than the clouds began to move!

We could actually see one of the crater lakes  

We started snapping pictures quickly before the clouds moved in again.

And sure enough they did soon start covering it up again.

It was great to have got a proper view of at least one of the lakes though  

When we got back to the car I crossed to the other side of the road to see whether I'd be able to see Lagoa Seca as well.

It turned out that I sort of could, but this was a lake without water in it. I guess I should have deduced that from the name "Seca"!

Never mind, at least we'd seen one proper lake! We drove back down to Santa Cruz das Flores where we got some lunch, then headed to the airport to hand back our final rental car of the holiday and catch a plane back to Ponta Delgada (the big São Miguel one!) where we're staying in a hotel tonight before flying home tomorrow via Lisbon. Although the weather has been varied at times it's been a great holiday, visiting seven different islands and having some absolutely incredible views. I'm very glad that we finally got to make the trip