Archive - Originally posted on "The Horse's Mouth" - 2015-05-09 12:55:50 - Graham Ellis
I used to pride myself in my geographic knowledge - but this week, I realise there are gaps. I used to think that the Azores and the Canaries were little groups of islands just off the coast not all that far from Spain / Portugal and from the North African coast, but having spend yesterday in the Azores ... and now spending another entire day at Sea, I realise that this group of islands is pretty much out there in the Atlantic.
So it's quite remarkable to find that Ponta Delgarda, where we were yesterday for a few hours, is in many ways like an old Spanish or Portugese seaside town with some modern development, and a fleet of coaches, buses, etc just like the mainland, and prices in the market all very much in line with what I would expect on the mainland too. I don't know about their supply chains, but the costs of getting supplies out there either isn't as much as one would imagine, or there's some sort of underwriting / subsidy involved. What a contrast to Iceland, where you have to take out a mortgage on a hamburger and you say to yourself "I'm only here once in a lifetime and for just a few days, so what the heck!"
Cruise terminals tend to be distant from towns ... think of Tilbury or Harwich for "London" for example - or Bayonne for New York. But at Ponta Delgarda it's an easy walk into the town, and visa checks ahead of time allow us to use the ship as base and wander on and off with minimal formallity.
