Forest Hoff ~ Teacher ~ Guide ~ Musician ~ Artist

The day began cold and cloudy when we arrived at Cortaçor Hotel. Daniel, Louise and I sat and waited to plunge into the 13th anniversary of a Terceiran tradition…taking a Christmas tree to the bottom of the ocean and decorating it with underwater ornaments. In the photo, you can see two divers and the tree in the bottom of the bay. Lucky for me, a guy at the dive club let me borrow all the gear…in pink which everyone seemed to have a comment on. Liam, an Irish fellow sank the tree and we all began our search. Shells, sea-stars, sea-weed, and spark-plugs began filling the tree. Other sea-trash sat as presents under the tree. Later in Angra do Heroismo there was the festa de Concepção Imaculada (feast of immaculate conception) or Mothers Day. There was a holiday parade and the streets were packed. The parade kicked off with santas on motorcycles ripping through the street, and finished with an old St. Nicholas and the Mrs. in a horse drawn wagon.

Sunday we hiked the “Long Ridge” an un-named ridge without trail we’ve been wanting to do for a while. The shotgun blasts and yelling farmers tried to spoil our fun…we pushed on. The ridge gave us spactacular views of the island and eventually the clouds started kicking the sun out of the party.

1 December 2007  Catherine followed us back to Sierra de Santa Barbara for a day-hike.  Rick and I showed up fully loaded with his mountaineering tent.  At this time of year, the preserve can vary from sunny and clear to hail-storm in a matter of minutes.  We drove through the clouds and started off from the summit toward the canyon and lucky for us, it cleared.  The clouds would pour into the toilet bowl canyon, and five minutes later would swirl out.  Lagoa Negra (Black Lake) could hold four Logoa Fundas (where we backpacked in the first section of the canyon) and is shallow enough to walk across.  After setting up camp, we hiked with Catherine halfway back to her car and then back to find that our tent was now the home to millions of little spiders.  Tucker had his own room in the vestibule, but we let him in on account of the spiders.  The wind and rain gave the bomber tent a go and couldn’t pull a single pin.  Santa Barbara is actually an active volcano and is the largest and youngest on the island so we debated whether the tent would withstand lava.  We agreed that it wouldn’t.  The next morning after pulling off spiders for a few hours, we set off to explore the far reaches of the canyon.  Rick said it seemed a lot like the show Lost.  Below Rick is the orange dot approaching the white one (our tent).

Sunday night Catherine, Rick and I went to Angra do Heroismo (da Capital) to check out the annual electricity draining that takes place every december.  I guess the plus side is that rather that driving around to look at lights, they are walking around town, talking to eachother.  Praia also had their red-carpet out, literally for a fashion show.  Together with the holiday lights it is competition to an Aspen holiday.

Angra on the left, Praia on the right

21 November (wednesday)  Megan, Catherine, Rick and I did a night hike at Sierra do Cume.  It was a full moon and I was able to take some nice long exposures of the landscape.  The rock walls were making good for a tri-pod, not as good for holding your lens-cap which I heard plinko down inside the rocks.  With every rock moved, it plinko’d further into the depths below.  It continued to play hide-and-seek as I took down the rock wall.  Now, getting a mortarless rock wall back together is like trying to stack billiard balls.  At least it was worth it for the photos.

You’d think there’d be some crazy adventure in da mix for Thanksgiving…originally we had planned to go climb Pico Mountain, on Pico island.  Then we decided to buy tickets to Morocco and save our money for that.  So Thanksgiving was pretty low key…some local breakfast…some Indian for lunch…and Catherine and I made a salad and Thai food for dinner…and gelado of course for dinner.  Saturday was when the big adventures started… 

17 November~  The Montaneros held a climbing competicao in the gym in Angra.  Among the finalists were a few tall guys, and me.  One wore tennis-shoes and was pretty solid, the other had climbing shoes though was likely a 5.8 climber.  Everyone watched in anticipation ehen I would go on rope.  I felt kinda bad being the only foreigner and winning the competition.  They told me it is good to have someone push thier limits (I’m not that great of a climber).  They made it up to me later by asking me to meet them at a cafe to go climbing in Sao Mateos later.  The cafe has been condemed and they were a no-show.  My lights decided to use up all the battery in the car, so I began rigging up a pully system to get the car out of it’s parking place.  Luckily it is light and some entertained portuguese gave me a push.

Sunday: Catherine, Rick, and I went to Lagoa da Falca (Lake of bird) which we call “Duck Lake,”  a fake lake (pond) that is filled with ducks they brought from mainland Europe.  From there we followed a creek and ended up at a waterfall. 

Just like Santa Barbara canyon, nobody believes that it exists on this island.   

Since we had monday off for Veterans’ day, Rick and I went on a backpack on the longest trail on the island.  It starts where 5 roads converge and there is a center where they train the bulls to hate people through routine torture.  The hike passes a bunch of old industrial crap that the EU has protection signs around…hmmm…curious.  We went up a steep bank and into “Bull Canyon” (I call it this for the ridiculo bull gate protecting the entrance.  As you can see here the canyon is very exposed with unbelievable terrain. 

Somehow we got off trail and ended up back at the bull gate.   We decided to hike back to the truck and start over from the backside of the trail.  On our way back to the truck portuguese kept passing us and yelling stuff in portuguese.  Finally two portuguese stopped us and using sign language told us they were running bulls through the road.  We took another one and the mud was shin-deep.  We did get a nice show of bulls running though.

From the other side of the caldeira, the trail was steep and wet.  It rained the whole time on this side turning the trail into a cascading stream.  It was also over grown and one spot we had to crawl under downed trees and pull our packs behind us.  We were exhasted by the time we had landed inside the caldeira, which was a peet swamp of doom.  After searching, we found a site to pitch the tent on the edge under some trees and took turns crawling into the tiny tent (with tucker), laughing our heads off.  Before dozing off, we both went over all the horrible things that were going to happen in the middle of the night: a freak storm will rip the rainfly off, collapsing the tent, letting typhoon rain melt us, while a pack of bulls run through, trampling us, and if were lucky, horning us to death.  That didn’t happen, though I was sure I heard some bull sounds that night.

In the morning, soaked to the core, we got da heck outta there pronto!  We called up our friend John and went to Angra to recivilize…well…sorta.  The rooster would say otherwise.

Terra Chã means literally “land of tea” which is something the Açores grow a lot of.  In fact the islands are the only places in Europe where.  The marking system for the trail are numbered signs with stairs, because there are a lot of stairs to go over all the stone walls.  (Our party of 6 cheated by parking a car at the bottom and hiking down from the top.)  We had great views of Monte Brasil and took lunch on the largest sistern (cows’ waterbowl)  on the island.  The hike goes past the “Animal Hospital,” the place they take sick animals for quarantine until they die or get better.  The only sick animal we found was a rabbit that had been stuck in a systern for a very long time.  Here you can see the rabbit being saved.

  Further along the view of Monte Brasil and Sao Mateos became clear.  The path steepend leading to the end.  Afterward we had fish at a place in Porto Judeo near the cave.

Nov, 2007 Saturday Tim and I went fishing with our friend Bruce.  We spent a lot of time rigging worthless bait, and left the day empty handed.  I finally got in the water though and the cliffs made for a good bathing launch.Water hole balance

We also found the bus-station in Biscoites, though didn’t buy any tickets:

3 Nov, Sunday:  Another Hoff (Carter) Nikki, Rick, and I went to Porto Judeo cave, one we had been wanting to go into for a while.  We were in it for an hour when there were  no more holes we could crawl in.  The furthest corridor had a hollow sounding floor with some give.  We were waiting for it to collapse though it never did . The cave opens up to the ocean.

Another Judeo cave shot

The Açoreans go crazy for trick-or-treating and I escaped the madness just in time.  We wanted to do a night hike in Terra Chã and after hiking for a while, visability was about 5 feet.  We couldn’t find the trailhead so we went back to Terra Chã.  The section of trail we did hike I was able to capture these ghosts: which is actually just Megan and Rick in a creepy doorway.  Back in Terra Cha there was a chestnut festival going on.  Portuguese festivals are wonderful because everything is free.  This one had all you can eat grilled sardines (big ones), wine, and boiled chestnuts.  A portuguese friend is telling me about the tradition of grilled sardines eaten on leaves.

The sardines were wonderful and even better were the boiled chestnuts as you can see here:

19-28 Oct I had a three day weekend starting the 19th and Rick and I went back to Santa barbara and hiked the entire canyon on a three day backpack.  We have also been doing night hikes on wednesdays.  Last wednesday it was a full moon so we hiked Ramenoes, we hiked without headlamps it was so bright.  Friday Rick and I took three seventh graders on the Lago do Negro hike so they can lead it for their class.  I worked all day saturday.  Saturday night we went caving again in Porto Martins and were both so exhausted we nearly fell asleap crawling through tight spots.  Sunday we hiked Monte Brasil, an extinct volcano barely attached to Angra do Heroismo.  The caldeira rim is scattered with old fort ruins and it offers amazing views of coastal Terceira.   

Saturday night we went into Saõ Mateos and had the best fish on the island, the view is decent too.

 14 October We let the bulls out of the cage.  Friday night, Rick and I explored one of the tighter caves on the island.  It was an old lava tube that several flows and collapses had formed into a deep and untouced casa de darkness.  Many entries were barely wide enough for our monster bods (yeah I’m working out again).   Two full days of clog stomping starting with a long diverse trail on saturday.  The sun must have paid off the cloud mafia.   Yarrr….On the far side of the island we could see three other islands (sao Jorge, Pico, and Graciosa)!  After standing on the highest point in tercera (if you don’t count all the radio tower crap) Sierra da Santa Barbara 1023m, we stumbled blindly into an unknown trail.  Quickly we found ourselves in Hoff Canyon (above). We named the canyon and the lake (Dino), being the first Americans to discover them.  We found ourselves deep in the canyon without the time to return, so we climbed the canyon wall through a mossy couloir. Route finding was tricky, and we thought we were trapped on a grassy ledge with no way up or down.  Finally we pulled through and on the other side was an caldeira the size of rhode island! We figured we could cut straight across, as it turned out it was a peete bog that we crossed anyway with peete sludge up to our knees.

  We were trying to make wiki-wiki so we could get to the bullfight before it started.  It was in the streets of Porto Martins and we watched it from a friend, Julie’s house.  We had the best show of all four bulls!  The bull-fighters (or crazy common folk using umbrellas, old blankets, or just their hands) kept getting the bull into our Julie’s yard to fight them. The boys that tug the bulls rope need Chuck Taylors to outrun the bulls and they have quite a name: Photo of the squad Later we were invited to a portuguese winery, which was an old stone shed (you could fit more people in a peugeot) and about 15, “barrels” (or wooden carraffes) of wine. I was ready for the leprechon to jump out of one.  They were quite proud of the yellow mystery they handed us in dixie cups. One thing that is awesome about these islands is that there are public bathrooms everywhere!  Europe and the states need to catch up with these third world crazies!