The Ultramarine Azores under the anticyclone

Ah, the Azores are off to a good start... In Horta, the tiny capital of Faial, one of the nine islands of the Portuguese archipelago lost in the middle of the Atlantic, Brel and his port of Amsterdam take centre stage at Peter's Bar. With a bit of difficulty though. The crowd is dense on this Friday evening, noisy, boisterous and probably a little drunk; cosmopolitan and native, young and old, seated at the rough marble-topped tables or leaning against the ugly panelled counter. But no one cares about the glazed frieze, preferring to laugh and sing in this hallucinating décor of garish flags, brightly coloured pennants, faded T-shirts and scraps of graffitied rags, autographed and hung in a great chromatic disorder from the ceiling, the walls and above the bar... These are souvenirs left by sailors who have passed through here - and who inevitably pass through here when they cross the Atlantic - by this bar, this myth with its big heart and ever-open arms, located opposite the marina, which itself is fairly well painted. Seafarers, the famous and the unknown, solo sailors and crews, Peter and John Guinness, Cousteau, Kersauson, Tabarly, Lamazou; Jacques Brel, too... and so many others, almost all of them, during a stopover or a night spent in the company of the things of the earth, have sat down at the table of its charismatic owner, José Henrique Azevedo, or even, for the older ones, at that of his father, both traditionally nicknamed Peter.

One of the biggest bars in the world

For the moment, the gin and tonic - "the best in the world", as they say - is being poured down by the glassful. It's a bit like in Hemingway's day, when the same thing was done with a bellini at Harry's bar in Venice or a mojito at La Bodeguita in Havana. Make no mistake about it, Café Sport, handed down from father to son since 1918, better known as Peter's Bar, is in the league of the world's great bars, the kind that make books and were hated by the wives of yesteryear. Long ago. Long before women were content to say their goodbyes on the quayside and became sailors in their own right... As you will have gathered, this is not a place to be privatised, as it would then be sterile. But José Henrique Azevedo accepts groups, which inevitably become disorganised and melt into the crowd, even before the meal begins, to live their lives with people they would never have imagined meeting one day; a real joy. Tomorrow, they'll be climbing to the first floor to discover, along with an astonishing collection that's unique in the world, a huge piece of the history and culture of the Azores islands. Good taste? Bad taste? The fact remains that some of the hundreds of engraved whale teeth displayed in the rather old-fashioned showcases are true works of art. This is a tradition of whaling sailors who kept their hands busy during their rare periods of rest, by carving the ivory teeth of the animals they had hunted. Their favourite subjects were ships, galleons caught in storms, whale-hunting scenes, religious compositions, naïve or highly sophisticated works, including fairly recent portraits of Cousteau and Tabarly. A few rare artists, including John Van Opstal, a Dutchman living in the heights of Horta, still do scrimshaw on antique ivories and welcome small groups into their studios. A piece sells for between €50 and €1,000. "Americans have been crazy about them ever since they saw an engraved tooth on Kennedy's desk in a magazine," says John Van Opstal. The controversy is obviously raging. Should you buy, should you boycott? Ivory comes exclusively from animals hunted in the past and, in any case, is very carefully controlled. But wouldn't an increase in demand generate a new market - and a criminal one at that?

Whaling has been banned in the Azores since 1984. But in the 19th century, American whalers came here to collect sperm whale spawn, which they then processed into oil, as well as the manpower needed to catch it. There were no factory ships back then, no Japanese-style pneumatic cannons or sonar detectors. But it was a dangerous hunt - which was hardly likely to exterminate the cetaceans, given the sheer number of them and the relatively small number of catches - and which consisted, after a lookout posted in a tower had spotted a prey, of planting everything there, spades, pickaxes and ox carts, to row out with six or seven men, including a harpooner, on a fragile boat. The small harbours, which, as you can imagine, were not always very appetising, are now charming and can be found all over the central islands.

But it's on Pico, the second largest island in the Azores archipelago, just 7km from Faial, that you'll find the prettiest harbours, with a hint of nostalgia, the famous Portuguese saudade. Calheta de Nesquim in particular, with its very long access ramp to the water, the sea below, the whaleboat hangars above, the church as white as a young bride perched on a rock overlooking the whole, and the inevitable bistro that goes with it. Further afield, in Sao Roque do Pico, you won't want to miss the moving visit to a perfectly preserved former factory, the fabrica da baleia, and in Lajes, you can linger at the Museu dos Baleeiros. Here you can learn that the waters of the Azores are home to more than twenty species of cetacean, as well as a very large number of dolphins. Specialist agencies, including the one with an office in Peter's Bar, offer impressive photo safaris, particularly in summer when the whales are all around. The whale watching boats can take up to 45 people and all comply with legislation designed to avoid disturbing these mythical animals, which are now totally free in these waters. Afterwards, a tasting of Pico wine is a must, as the island is renowned for producing excellent vintages such as verdelho. Vines have had such an impact on Pico's culture that they have shaped the landscape to such an extent that it has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The result is a tangle of low walls of black lava, hundreds of walls, perhaps thousands, the result of a Titan's work delimiting small squares where a few vines have been planted.

Pico, the black island. And with good reason: its volcano, Pico, a sort of basalt Chinese hat, dominates the island's 447 km2. The volcano is omnipresent, even if its summit, at 2,351 metres, the highest in Portugal, is often lost in the clouds. It is a delight for nature-lovers, including incentive groups, who organise country buffets on its lower slopes. Not very high, then...

Infernal powers of volcanoes and the ocean

For this is the Azores, a two-hour flight from Lisbon and four hours from New York, monstrous volcanoes rising from the ocean floor, which is not always convenient either. They are everywhere, sculpting enormous calderas in the open sea, mountain lakes in the centre of the islands, criss-crossing the English green countryside with red lava paths, shaping the black walls of the houses and transforming the landscape, as in Faial, into an almost lunar no-man's-land dating back to the winter of 1957-1958. First it was the sea, a few hundred metres off the coast of a small fishing port, which was covered in smoke. Then it began to bubble, then to spit fire and sprays of sparks, then to send columns of black smoke high into the sky; then it stopped, only to start again, until a mountain of lava arose and was named Capelinhos. The front page of a Paris Match at the time read: "Hell on earth".

And to be infernal, it was infernal. The whole of this part of the island was covered, or almost covered, by lava, ash and dust, leaving behind the apocalypse sections of the walls of fishermen's houses that can still be seen today, and above all a largely buried lighthouse that has recently been transformed into a museum. This museum, which is invisible from the outside, has been excavated beneath the ruined lighthouse so as not to disfigure the landscape. Remarkable both for its hyper-contemporary interior architecture and for its clear, limpid museography, displaying objects, eyewitness accounts of the era and photos, including the famous Match cover... After that, a walk on the volcano, which is now welded to the mainland, makes for a truly successful excursion. All the more so as the volcano is destined to disappear fairly quickly under the pounding of the ocean waves, which do not go easy on the area, as they do just about everywhere in the Azores. That's why natural pools have been created on the coasts of each of the islands, where you can frolic in complete safety, protected as you are by the lava barriers that nature seems to have deliberately placed there.

The famous taste for parties

As you'd expect, in the Azores, an incentive organised in the last land before America is all about the sea and nature. However, urbanity is never far away, and is a forerunner on the island of Terceira, which can be reached in less than an hour by plane from Faial. Terceira, as its name suggests, was the third Azorean island to be discovered in 1427.

Its port alone conjures up an extraordinary imaginary world made up of marine epics, stories of caravels and Vasco da Gama, treasures brought back from Latin America by Spanish galleons, battles, pirate flags and privateer affairs that weren't worth much more. Earthquakes too. The last one, with a force of 7.8 lasting 23 seconds, took place in 1980 and destroyed 80 % of Angra do Heroismo, the capital. And this capital is quite a programme. Firstly, it was the first European city to be built in the middle of the Atlantic, and secondly, it was a masterpiece of urban planning, the first of its kind, with buildings constructed according to a very rigorous plan from the 16th century onwards. The historic centre has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983.

The result is baroque churches, rich mansions with balconies, convents and administrative buildings, all perfectly aligned, and a public garden that is always full of life, even in the depths of winter. But behind this rigour, these white-painted sash windows, these little lace curtains and these old-fashioned shops, there is - who would have suspected it at first? - a taste for celebration that is famous throughout the Azores. Everything is good for living well. Even the Holy Spirit, who, along with the celebrations held in his honour on the seven Sundays following Easter, takes on a veritable cult, bordering on the pagan, and justifying the construction of tiny, ultra-coloured chapels all over the island. Then there are the bull runs through the streets of Angra, where young men have the opportunity to prove their virile courage while providing video makers with hilarious scenes that are played all year round in the town's shop windows. Then there's the cheerfulness of the bars and cafés, perhaps partly due to the presence of the American military base. The fact remains that on this island lost in the middle of all this water, an art of the table inspired by the environment is cultivated, resulting in delicious stews of fish, seafood or beef in terracotta casseroles. And it smells delicious, it smells deliciously of the cuisine of yesteryear...

In the meantime, the anticyclone that makes our summers so beautiful is going full steam ahead with its clouds, its whims, its irritations, even its hysterics, and is moving faster than you can say from an almost transparent blue sky to a worrying indigo. And then goes off to look elsewhere, no doubt to write us a mood forecast.