There are two tea plantations on São Miguel, the only tea plantations in Europe. I am not a tea drinker, and wished there was a coffee plantation instead, but as they say, “When in the Azores, do as the Azorians do.”
We drove up and across the island to the Gorreana Tea Factory.
Read the name carefully, or you will end up laughing for a while, as we did.
First impression: the tea plants are smaller than I anticipated, like low squares off hedges, in neat rows. They look like little dark green terraces marching up the hill. Looking at them, the bright green, neat terraces going up to the trees, mist and fog low on the mountains, is a real “different country” experience.
The factory and plantation produces tea, and they let you walk through the factory when it isn’t in production. There are a lot of wooden shaker and sorter type things with belts and pulleys and chutes. The real highlight was going up in the attic to the “shrivel room” where they put the tea leaves on drying racks. The smell here is like a light herbal perfume.
I was looking for the room full of ladies whom I just knew would be hand-filling every individual bag with a spoonful of tea leaves, and sewing it shut with needle and thread. But I never saw that room.
They harvest the tea kind of like pruning a hedge with big clippers. I mean they simply go by and mow the top of the plants flat. All the twigs and insects and other stuff just adds to the “terrior” or maybe the “Teaior.” Looking at the simple factory and harvest methods, tea production just doesn’t seem all too complicated.
We got free sample of tea, and I found I liked the green label tea better than the blue label.
As we left, not satisfied with the free cup, I stole three leaves from one bush to chew on.
Talk about bitter!
This was a classic case of a town looking more promising from a distance.
We continued to the next town over, a place called Moinho.
This place was the find of the day.
We parked and walked down to the cove. There is a restaurant along this road, and another right down on the beach. We chose the beach place, called O Moinho Terrace Cafe.
On the way down we noticed the nice, neat row of colorful homes along the road, and the signs, and the big family tree someone painted on the outside of their business.
We have seen these before, in other countries: you have the original great-great-great-great grandparents who founded the place, then a tree leading off to everyone else until finally one branch has the current owners. Seems to me it is popular in Austria.
Anyway, I went to look at it and just burst out laughing! Someone obviously has a great sense of humor in this village!
The “family tree” leads from the founders to some lesser known relatives like Einstein, Bob Marley (right next to Mother Theresa, nice touch!) John F. Kennedy, the “All Seeing Eye” and Ghandi.
I like this place already!
And the more we walked and looked, the more little things we noticed.
We walked into the bar and ordered a pizza and wine.
While we waited it started to rain. We crowded under the umbrella but it rained harder. So we grabbed our stuff and ran inside to share a table with two German girls.
We ate, the rain let up, and everyone returned to the beach.
The village itself has a couple guest rooms, one restaurant and one café on the beach, and the campground. It’s The kind of place you wear shorts and flip flops all day, read a book, drink on the beach and eat.
This could be a quiet place to spend a few days.
Hell, I could stay here a few days.
This is a great find!
We had to park a ways over and walk along an almost industrial area, but in a fish-sort of way. Shacks, small houses, some with tiles exteriors like in Lisbon, every house with Saint Somebody over the door.
We walked along the length of Santa Barbara Beach. It is the longest beach on the island. It has to be over a kilometer in length, warm black fine soft sand. The humidity is 90% so it is warm, but when the sun comes out we break into immediate sweat.
Sun out, sweat. Clouds, cooler.
We just walked along. The middle part, away from the "surf schools" at one end and the "Eco-Lodge" at the other end is the quietest.
This is the “surfing beach” and though we saw many people taking lessons no one else was really surfing here. More people were actually surfing over at Moinho.
They have a cool thing on the beaches here: free ashtrays. There is a big sign holding perhaps fifty red plastic ashtrays. The sign says, "It is better if you don't smoke, but if you do please use this ashtray and we will take care of it for you."
Now that is progressive thinking, and so simple to do.
This was a fun, slow day of just looking around.