Postcard from Saõ Jorge

 

Saõ Jorge, October 1

Dear Neil, they say the past is another country and this is another country altogether. We arrived Friday night. Sinead got seasick as it was a rough crossing of 2 and a 1/2 hours, we saw dolphins. Velas, the port town, looked pretty rough, and we had trouble finding a place that was cheap, so we wound up in a dark hovel. We were looking for a cheaper place to stay, but it was a port in any storm kind of situation. Canice forgot all the guidebooks. We should’ve asked the taxi drivers who are super guidebooks here. Then, on a whim, the owner of the ferry boat canceled the Sunday boat out as there were not enough passengers, so we had no way off the island until next week. Which meant we were going to miss our flight to the mainland and Lisbon. In desperation, I approached a taxi driver and explained the situation. He gave us a fantastic tour of the island Once he realized that Candace was married to someone who came from Saõ Jorge. We were able to get a flight off the island with the help of our taxi driver, with a whole lot of arguing with the airline clerk, for a little more than the boat fare. She thought she could sock it to us because we were tourists, he gave her the what for. We leave this afternoon so all is well, after all. It rains hard here every day. But it is like Molokai. The island is a long, steep ridge, mid Atlantic kind of like Point Reyes too. It’s raining so hard, we can’t even go exploring on our last morning here. It was only an exploratory trip after all—aplace to come back to later.