Here We Go! Days 51-60 (Take your Pico, chums!)

On Pico, we're staying in a strange wooden house with this view from the front porch, where we spend most of our time.

On our first morning, we were greeted by a full rainbow.

And several days in, we caught the tail-end of the lunar eclipse.

Pico is a long, skinny island, so you can see the ocean from just about anywhere. Turn around, and if the clouds are cooperating, you can also see Mount Pico, the highest mountain in all of Portugal. We had planned to attempt the climb, but your hero was felled by a dastardly sinus infection/fever and ended up spending several days (and a few boxes of kleenex) of indisposition, expectoration, and convalescence.

Milady puts a brave face on things: We finished off our diving with an excruciatingly uncomfortable, mildly unsatisfying shark expedition. 11 hours of rough seas on a poorly-outfitted boat next to buckets of chum. You've probably heard of chumming; it's exactly as disgusting as you might expect, and much more tedious. Let me walk you through the process.

Get a big bucket with a lid, poke holes in it, fill it with rotting fish guts and bones, tie a rope to it, and throw it in the water. This is your "perma-chum", and stays in the water for the duration. Next, get another bucket, fill half way with fish guts. Now it's time for the expert chumatier to mix seawater with the guts in a special process designed for maximum chum-distribution, and carefully scoop out the mixture with a special chum scoop and dump it in the water. The chumatier will patiently repeat this process for LIKE 6 FUCKING HOURS! As the boat drifts, this creates a yummy chum slick, which, in theory, will attract the sharks. When the chumatier sees signs of sharks, he informs the divers, who suit up and jump in.

Divers wake up and quickly gear up, jump into the chum slick, grab on to the rock lines extending from the boat, and look for the sharks. OK, so we were pretty lucky in the end to get like 60 seconds of close-up time with a 3-4 meter long blue shark, surrounded by a school of striped pilot fish. Very cool and sharky. Was it worth the 11 FUCKING HOURS on the boat? Ehh...

So, this mildly traumatic experience cemented our decision to stay off of boats for the rest of the trip, and led to a mildly euphoric recovery day, which included cooking a big meal.

Did some trundling around the countryside in our little underpowered car (Rani is looking forward to the next two stops in UK cities where she doesn't have to drive). Pico's unique viticulture has earned it UNESCO World-Heritage status. Grape vines are grown directly in the volcanic gravel, so they have to be protected from wind by rows and rows of rock fences.

We heard a rumor that there was one sandy beach on the island, but we couldn't find it. We did find some nice views, though.

Happened upon Sao Joao Forest Park, which is full of exercise equipment (reminiscent of Chinese parks) and, strangely, a small herd of deer!

Stumbled into a regatta in São Roque, where they use old whaling boats for recreation now.

This guy guards the shore.

Helpful road signs warn of... Lots of bugs?

And, for no reason at all, my new favorite coffee mug.

Tomorrow, we're off to the continent. The Azores have been mostly good to us, overloading our beauty receptors and maxing out our serenity reserves. Overall a unique experience for us, which we've enjoyed for just long enough to be ready to move on.

Onward for the final push!