Lost in Green and Mist: A Journey Through the Azores

The first thing I remember is the green. Not the bright, manicured green of city parks, but a green that seemed alive—ferns spilling down volcanic slopes, moss covering old stone walls, hydrangeas so thick they looked like they were growing out of the fog itself. Flying into São Miguel, the largest of the Azores, I realized I had no idea how to measure beauty when it refused to be dramatic. The islands weren’t trying to impress; they simply were.

One afternoon, I found myself walking along the edge of Sete Cidades, a twin-lake crater that shifts color with the weather. The locals tell stories about a princess and a shepherd whose tears created the two lakes—one green, one blue. Standing there, it didn’t matter whether the legend was true. What mattered was how the wind moved the water in slow ripples, and how silence carried better than any guidebook.

In Ponta Delgada, the capital, mornings start unhurried. Fishermen return while the town yawns awake; cafés smell of espresso and fresh rolls, and conversations float in Portuguese I only half understood but fully felt. I didn’t have an itinerary. Instead, I borrowed the rhythm of the place: walk until hungry, eat until curious, wander until tired, rest until restless again.

Food here doesn’t announce itself. A bowl of cozido—meat and vegetables slow-cooked underground by volcanic steam—arrives at the table looking plain. But one bite tells the whole story of a land that cooks with the earth’s own heat. Pineapples grown in glasshouses taste sweeter than candy. Even a simple cup of tea, grown in Europe’s only tea plantation, carries a memory of rain.

What struck me most wasn’t what I did, but what I didn’t. I didn’t check my phone much. I didn’t rush to “see it all.” I didn’t feel like a tourist. The Azores has a way of erasing your lists and offering you space instead—space to walk slowly, to watch clouds drift across a crater lake, to listen to cows grazing on slopes that seem impossible to stand on.

One evening, I sat on the black rocks by the sea. Waves struck hard, sending salt into the air. The horizon was wide and restless, yet the village lights behind me glowed steady, as though promising that storms here are only visitors. A man sat a few meters away, fishing without much urgency. He waved, said something in Portuguese, and handed me a second cup of coffee from his thermos. We watched the sea together without needing translation.

That’s what I took away from the Azores: the reminder that travel doesn’t have to be loud to matter. Sometimes the best places whisper, and if you’re patient enough to listen, they’ll change the way you carry silence when you return.