Day 5: Terceira

The benefit of staying in an aparthotel is that breakfast is included, so we made the most of the hotel buffet this morning. I was particularly excited to find that, alongside the usual breakfast offerings, there was a place of mini pastel de nata

After breakfast we set off for a road trip around Terceira. We're not staying long on any of the islands, so we wanted to make the most of the time we had, especially when the weather is good. It was quite sunny when we woke up on the coast this morning, but the weather wasn't forecast to be perfect for the entire day.

We left the hotel and began driving along the northern coast of the island. I'd read that the northern coast was impressive and before too long we saw a series of viewpoints signposted from the main road. We turned off to investigate one of them.

It was a lovely spot and we had a good view of the cliffs.

The first scheduled stop on our road trip was a place called Biscoitos.

The coast here is quite reminiscent of Mosteiros on São Miguel, with lumps of black lava going down to the sea.

It's really quite an unusual landscape.

And we could see that there were some big waves crashing against the rocks.

As we walked a little further around the coast we came to a bathing area.

Some of the waves here were absolutely incredible!

We stood for ages watching them splash onto the rocks...

...and trying to catch some action shots.

It definitely didn't look like a good day to go swimming!

We continued driving around the coast of the island and soon the sea began to look a bit calmer.

The next sights we wanted to see were inland though, in the middle of the island, and the weather there wasn't quite so good. As we drove upwards, towards a small lake I'd read was pretty, the weather became increasingly misty. We managed to track down the car park for the lake and then just succeeded in crossing the road before these cows came along!

There really are cows everywhere on Terceira! My Azores guidebook recommended against trying to hike on this island because there are so many fields with bulls in too.

The area around the lake was ridiculously green.

It looked quite atmospheric in the mist and light rain.

Bizarrely, there were some chickens and cockerels wandering around all this greenery.

The lake itself turned out to be tiny...

...and almost obscured by the low clouds.

But there were lots of ducks!

And ducklings too  

The next stop on our road trip sounded really exciting: Furnas do Enxofre.

This is another area of volcanic activity, similar to the site we visited near the Furnas lake on Monday.

Unfortunately, it was so misty today that we could hardly see anything!

We could certainly smell the sulphur in the air and see some scorched earth which very much looked like you wouldn't want to tread on it.

But the weather meant it was hard to tell what was steam rising from the earth and what was just general cloud  

There was one more must-see sight on Terceira that we wanted to visit but for some reason it only opens in the afternoons. We headed back to the hotel for a bit, then set out around 2pm towards Algar do Carvão. This is an ancient lava tube, located in the centre of Terceira.

You can climb down several hundred steps, inside what would once have been an active volcano.

When you get down to the bottom there's an amazing pool of bright blue water.

Actually, we cheated and didn't quite climb down as far as the water; we were conscious of the fact that every step we climbed down we were going to have to climb back up! It was a fascinating place though - it felt like a cave, but a very deep vertical kind of cave.

And a very damp cave - we constantly had water dripping on our heads  

The most spectacular views were arguably on the climb back up to the top, looking upwards towards the entrance.

Like everything on Terceira, it was all so green!

I'm not sure I'd want to climb up all those steps again but it was an interesting experience and we've definitely had a fun time on Terceira  Tomorrow we will be moving on again, with a flight to the island of São Jorge.