Whaling and Tea Planting

Fiendishly hard to choose one or two photos again...

The main shows the others, next to our hire car, returning from a climb to a waterfall at Faial da Terra, an old whaling town. The stream flows through the middle of the houses, perched on the sides of the steep valley, and into the sea, next to a volcanic sand beach, where we picked up pumice stones.

The extra (deleted now to give me another extra) is of the Gorreana Tea Plantation, the oldest and currently, the only, tea plantation in Europe; the smell of tea being ground and dried was wonderful, and you can drink as much tea as you like (for free) as you go round the factory. Ask for milk if you want it.

Gratefuls:
- yet another day of beauty; concentrated on the eastern end of the island today, and saw a lot more of the sea from some beautiful belvederes
- Congro Lake; quite a hike through high forest to get there, but so worth it, and quite different to the others we've seen, a maar crater instead of a collapsed volcano
- meeting up with Delfina and Andrelino in Lagoa, here for the birth of their second grandchild