Flores - The Island of Flowers

A small pleasure fishing boat off the rocky South-West corner of Flores - the appropriately named Punta da Rocha - my thoughts at this point (after 30 days at sea alone) were "beautiful and green and rocky and craggy!"

View of the waterfall beach in the lee of the island on the South side where I took down my sails - in view of the Northerley breeze and forecast  North-Easterly swell I considered anchoring close up to the beach here but realising that it would be a pretty hard walk to the village I motored round to Lajes to have a look

The end of the breakwater protecting the port of Lajes from the South-West was being heavily reinforced with large heavy interlocking lumps of concrete

The port of Lajes looked sheltered enough in the conditions prevailing and the village looked beautiful -  

From where I anchored I had a great view of the enormous crane continuing to reinforce the end of the harbour wall

One of the six or seven Volcanic crater lakes which Jose took us to see on the day of my arrival in Flores

Some of the 365 waterfalls on the island of Flores - these ones on the cliff a little inland of the West coast

Dave, Taylor, and our host Jose at the Miradouro Craveiro Lopes which overlooks the West coast - you can see by the number of wild Hydrangeas here that Flores is named the Island of Flowers for good reason 

The Miradouro (like Mirador or Belleview) is very nicely named in a blue-tiled sign

Taylor with some of the wild hydrageas

A rocky cliff nearby showing the same sort of  hexagonal granite columns that one can see at the Devil's Causeway in Northern Ireland and on the island of Staffa in the Inner Hebrides 

One of Jose's cock-pheasants

This is Jose playing one of the mandolins which he has made

A couple of days later it is time for me to leave Flores - this is a view of the sunset from almost 10 miles East of the island - I hope I shall return soon for a longer stay! 

Do link to any of the following pages or link to any page shown on the left :-

Home Page  Pilot Whales  Azores-Falmouth  Visit to Pico  St Martin-Azores  12 Year Project   Return to UK  External Links 

Or go back to  2004 Cruising