Nordeste is lovely. Really. So pretty, amongst such lush garden Eden type landscapes and flora. We walked into the Serra Tronqueira, all the way up into laurel forests, that's the stuff that was around the whole of southern Europe before ice age and humans took over. It's  truly awesome and slightly scary because you feel so small and insignificant in this vast vulcanic mountain range, that could, just like that, explode. Now. Luckily, it doesn't (phew!) and the greenness of this tertiary age forest is preserved for now, creating the one and only spot for the priolo, a bird endemic to the Azores (that means native and exclusive I think). Just 120 of them are left and no, I haven't spotted one, I was too busy playing with a bamboo stick and don't think that convinced the few priolos that humans are nice and peaceful.

After five days though we wanted to venture a bit further afield than our feet would carry us. And that's when we hit the wall. There is one bus, and that one goes via the north of the island to Ponta Delgada. The bus that serves the south of the island, i.e. the closest towns, only departs twice a week. Both buses take absolute eternities, not surprising considering that mountains and very windy roads have to be climbed and descended. And climbed and descended. And climbed and descended. And... you get the picture. We also looked into visiting other islands, and again, public transport by ferry is virtually non existant, at least not in a way that would be feasible within a two week holiday. There is just one ferry which serves about six islands, but each only once a week...

This makes me wonder, how do people live here? Nordeste has a tiny supermarket, enough for the daily needs, but for anything else, well, one really has to go to the bigger towns. The big but is: Nordeste is the bigger town. Do people suffer 6 hours of a bus ride along the windiest mountain roads I've seen in a long time? Or does everyone own a car? Or do people simply not move (the amount of traffic on the roads would suggest that|) and produce everything they need in their own back garden? I'm not sure.

On the map, the whole island of Sao Miguel looks manageable, as if we could easily explore even the west on a day trip from Nordeste. I'm not so sure now. It may only be 100 or 120 km to get there, but hell, what are these like! Average speed of 40 km/h, up the mountain, down the mountain, constant bends just next to yet another abyss. Stunning scenery, if it weren't for my regular screams for sheer fear of the height manifesting itself right beside me. I simply couldn't drive, and luckily, forgot my driving license...

Yet the rented car is the only feasible option of transport, so be it. The first return journey after night fall suddenly brought home how isolated each village on this island is. Isolation which is obviously multiplied by the island being in the middle of the Atlantic, far away from any mainland. Little wonder that people here feel Azorean first before they feel Portuguese, and that the returned exiles from Canada are cheered big time when they perform in their own folklore group. You can take them out of the Azores, but you can't take the Azores out of them. And Canada is by no means any further away than mainland Portugal. There really isn't much in it.