At
about 0800 Ponta Delgada appeared out of the mist and by 0845 we were fully
tied up and ready for a day trip.
We
had breakfast in the room brought by our ‘Butler’ Prasad and it arrived on the
dot and was hot as per last time. 0910 check in for our tour and then off the
ship and on to the coach where we departed for an exciting tour of the
Pineapple farm. It became clear that yet again we had a tour guide who could
not stopping and so during the day we learnt on many occasions that there were
nine islands in the group and that the majority of people lived on the bigger
of the Islands, wow that’s a surprise, and everything was prefaced with
‘Actual’ and ‘more or less’ what a pain.
We
did not really want the pineapple farm but it was included in the trip up the
mountain to the Lakes so we just followed the crowd. Bearing in mind the tour
guide told us in advance how they were grown and when we got there he started
all over again, saying I will tell you…
We
left the farm and we continued through green fields quite full with milk herds
and ended up in a town called Ribeira Grande which was being updated as all the
roads were up however we walked to the nice church and then were shown to a
liquor store where no doubt he got his cut before heading up the hill to the
Lakes. We were able to take a few photos before the mist came in and blotted
everything out and so no point in staying so back down the hill we went and
ended back in Ponta Delgada where we got off the coach early with a view to
finding some decent internet connection.
In
the medium size shopping centre we found free Wi-Fi and availed ourselves of
this for a while catching up with emails and blogs and photos then had lunch in
a small café and were very happy with the food and then for some small
shopping. We wanted a small backpack and in a typical Chinese owned shop
stuffed to the brim with everything we found what we wanted and then walked
back to the ship for a cuppa and later watched the ship pull out for its five
day sail to the Caribbean Islands.
Noel
spent some time catching up on the Blog and processing the photos for today to
get them ready for upload at our next Island stop.
In
the evening we went to the buffet and discovered that it was an Indian food
evening but as it was early we tested it, Jen mostly had salads and Noel tried
a couple of dishes which were fine but not hot in the Indian sense. From there we went to the Palladium Theatre
with the ships troupe don an evening of ‘Queen’ songs, basically they had the
music from Queen but members of the troupe sang but they sounded nothing like
the originals and some of it was poor. Noel left after fifteen minutes to go
back to the cabin to read and then fifteen minutes later Jen turned up as she
could not stand it either and so an evening of quiet reading ensued. Tonight
the clocks go back again giving us an extra hour in bed. The ship is not
rocking so much tonight so perhaps we can sleep without the fear of falling off
the bed.
