Dear Readers, the weather looks set fair for lots of whale-watching trips from Wednesday onwards, but today, although it wasn’t horizontal rain, it was way too choppy, so we settled for some more Azorean culture. First up was a trip to the south part of the island. We stopped off at a windmill (this one was used to grind corn) and to admire, yet again, the drystone walls that surround each little group of vines.

There are a lot of semi-natural bathing pools – some are just as nature intended, plus hand rails and changing rooms, and some have been helped along a bit by the repositioning of rocks. Some of the group are quite keen to give them a go, but let’s see how everyone gets on.

I might have noted before about the tamarisk trees, which are African but have very high salt tolerance, and so have been planted everywhere. They’ve been pollarded and shaped in a very drastic way. There are lots of pollarded London Plane trees too.

There was a huge storm here in 1893 which wiped out an entire village (of which more later), and here there is a shrine to Santa Rita, the patron saint of lost causes (my friend J gave me a token for the saint which I carry around everywhere, so I was delighted to see the saint here).

Many of the houses are built of the volcanic rocks, and the local sparrows were nesting in the tiny gaps between the stones.

Then we headed to see a village that was completely destroyed in the storm of 1893. On the way, though, I spotted the endemic euphorbia of the Azores. I must avoid becoming a complete plant nerd but, apart from the marine life, the plant life of the Azores is extremely interesting, being such a mixture of endemics, aliens and a whole bunch of invasives. We passed fields full of Lantana, and hedges wreathed in Morning Glory.

 

You make your way down a very narrow, rubbly path. There’s a Cory’s Shearwater burrow…

At the bottom of the path you can see the remains of the village, now studded with ferns.

On the way back we came across this pretty thistle, which is native to Spain and has somehow gotten to the Azores via the Canary Islands and Madeira.

And then it was on to the Whaling Museum. Whaling was a big part of the Azorean culture and economy, petering out in 1984. The whales would be spotted from special watchtowers on the coast, and when a sperm whale was seen a firework would be sent up. The local whalers (who all worked at other things to supplement their paltry income) would jump into their boats and be towed out to the vicinity of the whale, before making their final approach by rowing up the whales.

The whale would be harpooned, but this was just to keep it close to the boat. The panicked whale would dive, but when it resurfaced  it would be repeatedly stabbed with lances, sometimes over a period of hours, until it died. Then it would be towed back to the village by the motor launches, to be cut up and for the whale oil to be sold. It was a brutal, bloody business, and so upsetting that several people had to leave the short film that we watched. It makes me wonder if some of the whales that we see now can actually remember when their kin were hunted. Sperm whales were hunted in particular because they’re much slower and more buoyant than most other whales, and also because they floated when dead. I am only glad that now the spotters look out for whales so that people can watch them respectfully, and that this is now how the islanders make a living.

Some of the scrimshaw (drawings on whale bone and whale ivory (usually from the teeth) was the most beautiful and detailed that I’ve seen anywhere.

Some whale bone was even turned into toys, like these doll beds and cribs.

And so, it’s hard to think about what used to happen to the whales that we’ve travelled so far to admire and enjoy, but it’s also important to remember how hard life was here, how cut off people were, and how difficult it was to make any kind of living. Plus, the Azoreans are working hard to make their tourism industry sustainable, and they no longer hunt whales, unlike Iceland or Norway or the Faroe or Lofoten islands. It gives me hope that things can change, even a cultural tradition as deeply embedded as whaling in these distant, rocky islands.

And tomorrow, fingers crossed, I’ll be able to report on some more whales. The weather looks set fair for the rest of the week, the wind is dying down, and I for one am raring to go!