[ lifestyle ]
The Azores
The Other Eden
West Virginia native Katie Allie shares
her adventures in exploring the Azores,
a lesser-known cluster of Portuguese
islands nicknamed “the other Eden”
where beauty and adventure abound.
Katie Allie
120
west virginia executive
My morning had begun with stuttering engine parts, two whale sightings
and, most importantly, Azorean queijadas in my belly. I have priorities, and
rich, buttery cheesecake pastries are one
of them, whether there are whales to be
seen or not.
The rest of the morning ticked by in a
blur of pine forests and misted farmland,
rolling past tea plantations and the occasional palm tree or elephant-sized fern. If
that sounds strange, it gets stranger. I was
riding an ATV with a group of friends,
all of us in a line like a wobbly string of
baby ducklings, and we were headed for a
spin around the rim of a volcanic caldera.
It’s not something I get to say every day,
but then the Azores are not an everyday
kind of place.
Many people have never heard of the
Azores. A part of Portugal, this loose
cluster of nine autonomous islands has
a heavy Portuguese influence on everything from its architecture to its language,
which is officially Portuguese, although
many people speak English as well. The
islands are known as os Açores, pronounced “Ahh-sor-esh” in Portuguese,
and are located about 850 miles west of
Portugal. If you look them up on a map,
you will see I’m not exaggerating when
I say they’re blissfully in the middle of
nowhere. During my recent visit, I explored
the largest island, São Miguel.