Day 3: São Miguel

It was another bright sunny day when we woke up in Ponta Delgada this morning, which was good news because we still had a lot of the island that we wanted to see. First on our list was the town of Furnas, on the eastern side of São Miguel. It took us about 45 minutes to drive there. Once we'd parked, we started strolling through the colourful little village.

Our route led us across a stream...

...then up a forest road.

We passed some beautiful flowers on our way.

Our destination was Lagoa das Furnas.

Last time we came here we walked all the way around the lake, but that was quite a long way!

Today we just wanted to have a bit of a stroll and enjoy the views.

Lagoa das Furnas maybe isn't quite as spectacular as the two lakes we visited yesterday, but it's still very pretty.

It's another place that seemed a bit busier than when we were here in 2018. We had to pay a €3 entry fee to access the lake area.

It was worth it, though. The reason I'm standing staring at the ground here....

...is because I'm watching this steam coming out of it!

The main attraction of Furnas is not the lake, but the volcanic activity.

The earth is so hot here that the locals cook stews by putting pots into holes in the ground.

The holes belong to different hotels and restaurants and many of them were labelled.

We saw a man come to start digging one of them up...

...and there it was  

Once you've paid your 3 Euros there are a series of little walkways you can follow around the thermal area.

Sometimes there was so much steam coming out of the earth that it was difficult to take a photo!

In some places we could see the water bubbling like crazy.

In other places it was mud that was bubbling.

It was definitely a unique place to visit! Once we'd finished admiring the volcanic activity, we walked back into the village of Furnas, having lunch in a cafe there. Yet again, the prices were very reasonable. After lunch we got back in the car and drove towards Nordeste, the most northeastern part of the island.

We remembered that there had been some really beautiful viewpoints on this part of the island last time we visited, and we weren't disappointed.

June is perhaps a slightly better month to visit for flowers, but it was still really pretty here.

And Tim really enjoyed making friends with the local cats!

My favourite viewpoint today was Miradouro da Ponta do Sossego.

There's a lovely garden here, with lots of plants and trees.

And there's some beautiful views of the sea too  

It's such a beautiful landscape and so green!

You can tell there must be a lot of days of rain for everything to look like this  

Once we'd finished admiring the views, we walked back through the garden to the car and drove home towards Ponta Delgada.

Tomorrow we'll be leaving São Miguel behind and flying to our next island of Terceira.  We've definitely enjoyed revisiting this island; I think it's been worth the wait