Jesse and I absolutely love our little cabin so today we spent the morning enjoying a light breakfast from groceries we picked up on the way, reading and researching/discussing what hike to tackle today. Found a number of books on cabin building and was quickly addicted to the book below. There are so many fascinating cabins all over the world! I read 1/4 of this 321 page book and it will be read cover-to-cover before I leave next week.

By noon we were ready to roll as the sun was out. We decided on a partially routed loop to Pico do Carvão. On our way there we stopped at 3 viewpoints of lakes. We also managed to take photos of a beautiful church and this cool truck (little sibling of the scary harvester?!) that mows the overgrown vegetation on the sides of the roads.

Miradouro da Lagoa de Santiago

Miradouro do Cerrado das Freiras

This is a viewpoint of Lagoa das Sete Cidades. The famous two lakes: the green (on the left) and the blue (right).

After our viewpoint pit stops, we parked by Miradouro do Pico do Carvão. Technically, you can see a lot from this viewpoint itself without hiking but the views from the top are out of this world (watch the video below). We managed to video chat with Riki who enjoyed the 360° view too. All the joy without the pain – lucky dog.

As the video rotates clockwise across São Miguel, you see the eastern extent, the southern coast, the western mountains, and the northern coast. Oh and some nice quiet dude just doing his thing.

Down we go, via a black, steep gravel wall that makes it way into our hiking boots before we even hit the bottom. Don’t want to hike that on a rainy day!

Finally on a smooth, paved road (up a neighboring hillside). In the picture below, you can see the peak we climbed up and the gravel pit we came down.

The road eventually turns back to gravel but is flat. En route, we see more lakes (at least one man made) and much vegetation.

Then suddenly we are in the woods surrounded by tall trees and cool wooden art and structures placed along sections of the trail.

Now to check out the Aqueduto do Carvão across the street from where we parked. It’s simple, but pretty cool in the context of our hike. All along the trails we had seen partially buried huge pipes connecting the man-made and natural lakes. Some were in the act of being installed as we walked. Those are the modern means of moving water from the mountains to places where humans need it (and streams & rivers don’t already do the job!). Aqueducts are an old way. Not much to it but it was a zen moment.

Now to find someplace to eat! All this walking has made me hungry. We drove north to Eh Pá, a Brazilian family restaurant in Ajuda Da Bretanha. We decided on a simple meal of chicken wings, burgers and fries accompanied by the 2019 Celine Dion Concert in Boston no less on TV (turns out our waiter is her biggest fan). No dessert, can you believe it?!

On the way back to our cute little home away from home, we stopped at Miradouro da Ponta do Escalvado. Literally, a 5 minute stop since the sunset had already set and the wind was whipping. Besides, our private jacuzzi was calling out to us. A perfect ending to a perfect albeit windy day.