How pleasant....a place relatively untouched by time......

Sure there is the natural beauty - hills and valleys so green they look almost "painted", the beautiful coastline visible almost from any drive....there is such beauty in the Azores. And there is also beauty in seeing row upon row of hydrangeas blooming everywhere. But one of the most pleasant surprises is being able to "step back in time" almost 50 years. Yes, they all have smartphones, Internet, TV, etc.....but in the evenings Azoreans come out to chit-chat with their neighbours, sometimes for hours. Families also go to parks to take in the evening air or chat. It is so common to see families picnicking for their evening meal even on weeknights......picnic spots are plentiful, clean and USED often. Their music is beautiful - some folkloric, some "fado" style (a very unique Portuguese style of "telling a story", usually a sad tale, in song) and even their modern music is delightfully cheery like old Beatles songs, only more romantic. The absence of LOCKS also painted a picture of the honesty of the people. So many greenhouses of pineapples had no locks and there didn't seem to be much crime. We saw the police (a man and woman in one car) come out only ONCE in the "big city" of Ponta Delgada.....whatever the "crime" was, it wasn't very serious as they wrote something in a notebook and left a few minutes later. There is a FEELING one has there that is difficult to describe. Firstly, you realize that you are in the middle of the HUGE Atlantic Ocean and even Sao Miguel's closest island (Santa Maria) cannot be seen unless one goes out to sea about 10-15 kilometers. You realize you are just THERE and that the REST of the WORLD is far, far away.....you don't hear about any wars, terrorism, drug cartels - you are just THERE on this beautiful island where people make time to enjoy their families. You forget all about politics, greed, and other feelings....you are just THERE in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. You cannot leave except by plane, and you don't want to leave anyway....you could stay there in that peaceful place forever, with only the sound of waves splashing on the rocks to disturb the peace, or at night the cry of a tern that sounds almost like a human baby crying. But in the morning comes the sweet, melodic singing of a songbird and it is a sweet way to start a day. You feel that you have stepped in the past by about 50 years and it's a very GOOD feeling. Schools all look like.....schools.....they are not surrounded by huge fences like prisons and the kids all walk to school. They look happy. We FORGET that 50 years ago our schools were happy places.....certainly not places where a crazed gunman would attack. What strikes one most is that poverty doesn't seem to exist. Oh, I'm sure some have more than others, but we didn't see a single homeless person, nor any beggar - why this is so, we're not sure. There are other small islands in the world where people are dying of starvation, so we don't think it's because it's a small island. Could it be that there is an absence of greed? People have smiles on their faces. The airport at Ponta Delgada reminds me of "aerodromes" when I was a kid.....open, very few "guards" - an openness and friendliness that few airports have nowadays. We pass a cafe in Ponta Delgada where there is a television showing "news of the world" - a fire in Venezuela, a car accident in Colombia.....all these places seem too far away and "unreal". Because we are not THERE. We are HERE....here in the middle of the HUGE Atlantic Ocean surrounded by sea, waves, whales, dolphins. Even the sharks, we were told by a marine biologist, are relatively harmless....why WOULDN'T they be??? After all, this is the Azores.