Guilt Free Colonization

Greetings from the Azores

Greetings from the Azores, aka the only place in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. If you head north, the next stop is Iceland. Go south, and you won’t hit land until Antarctica.

On this trip I didn’t want to lug a computer, so these posts are going to be light on text due to fat thumbs and an iPhone, and more reliant on photos. Anyfuckingway, how about that title?

Azores is part of Portugal, a nation with a not so nice history of showing up to already occupied parts of the world and proclaiming “yoink.” Plus enforcing unfair trade treaties, and don’t forget all the slavery.

But the Azores were different, because no one lived here yet when the Portuguese made their first settlements in 1432. There are allegations that maybe some Norse settled here a couple thousand years ago and either died out or bailed on the place, but those are unconfirmed.

The Portuguese knew of the islands at least sixty years before the first settlement, but I guess it was far enough away from Lisbon and sailing was enough of a pain in the ass that they took a while before the Portuguese said hey we could totally occupy this place full time. So they eventually did, and they didn’t have to murder or enslave or small pox infect a bunch of locals to do it.

I should, however, mention this fucking guy.

Vasco da fucking Gama. You can read about that murderous fuckstick in my book ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SHIT WENT DOWN or just go to this link:

Oh that’s weird it did a preview. Anyway, he sucked. On the way back to Portugal after traveling to India his brother got sick and they diverted to the island of Terceira in the Azores. Da Gama’s brother died and is buried there but he wasn’t that important I guess so the local town put up a statue of his asshole brother who lived.

There is lots more to learn about the place but like I said fat thumbs and iPhone. It’s kinda like a colder version of Hawai’i in that it’s atop the Mid-Atlantic ridge and volcanic as all shit except not currently exploding. Here is a photo of the inside of a volcano, looking out, that I took:

And here is a lava tube I crawled though a tweaked my low back and yes it still hurts.

And finally, sperm and blue whales are local to the islands. We didn’t see a blue whale but did see a mama sperm whale and her calf. My photos didn’t turn out well so here is a consolation bottlenose dolphin.

Just fyi that there are a LOT of paid subscriber post from the last couple of months, including a new one from just a couple of hours ago if you wanna upgrade:

And don’t forget to grab my book at a store or via JamesFell.com.