Hitch-hiking around Faial

This weekend a couple of us went to visit Faial- it's a stunning island, and in many ways, strikingly different from Terceira. Amongst the Azoreans, it's also famous for being the place where the 'best' Portuguese is spoken, i.e. they don't have a particularly distinctive accent, and the language there is much closer to that of Coimbra in the Centre of continental Portugal. This meant that in comparison with the conversations I've been having here- chatting with Faialense people was a breeze, and it was great to be able to just relax and talk with the locals about life on the island.

Like most of the islands, the public transport system leaves a lot to be desired, and we were determined not to fork out a load of cash for taxis all of the place, so on the whole, we hitch-hiked. This was wonderfully easy if you a) spoke Portuguese, and b) were girl wearing reasonably short shorts...
Three of us walked right round the Caldeira (the volcano crater), which took well over 3 hours, but provided fantastic views across to Pico, but ten after that, we still had to get back to the city of Horta. We walked several kilometres along the road before any traffic passed, but eventually, a pick up truck went by, and we jumped into the back (which was filled with sand and cement), and stood clinging on as we whizzed by the fields at about 40km/h, trying not to let go and fly out onto the road.When the truck stopped, we found ourselves by a bar, went straight on in and sat down to a nice cold drink, before continuing our walk across the island.

Over the next 2 days, we managed to catch rides from 6 different people, including one 80 yr old farmer with a tractor-come-truck which only had one gear, but it certainly proved a good way of meeting people. It was the openness of people both in Faial and Terceira that really struck me- in England, people would generally be suspicious of a group of kids trying to cadge a free ride, but here, they were so obliging and just wanted to know more about us and what we were doing in the Azores.

Looking forward to hitching around Sao Miguel this weekend and meeting people along the way!