It was still the third and final day for us at Sao Miguel in the Azores and we had one last activity to do to round out our time on the island.
It was a jam packed and eventful day for us. We had already done the Sete Cidades hike that morning and then the Boca do Inferno hike in the early afternoon. Now we were headed back down the mountain towards the central east part of the island to the town of Ribeira Grande. Our destination was the Chá Porto Formoso Tea Factory, the second tea factory and plantation on the island. The drive was about 40 minutes to an hour from Boca and we got there around 3:00pm (1500hr).
Chá Porto Formoso is actually located right beside the Chá Gorreana Tea Factory which we had visited a previously day. The two locations are only a 3 minute drive apart so you could easily do both in a single day if you wanted to be a lot more efficient about it. The parking at Porto Formoso was much more limited than Gorreana though, so you might need to go extra early to get a parking spot. Then again, it was pretty much dead when we went and the limited parking lot was basically empty, so maybe its not actually a concern?
We walked through the main gate which brought us into a nice garden on the property.
It was early spring so not a lot was in bloom but the garden was quite nice nonetheless.
Something especially interesting in the garden that I saw was that they had grafted multiple tree limbs together from different trees. This is the first time that I've ever seen that before and thought that it was pretty cool.
A major plus for us was that the clouds that seemed to stick to the tops of the mountains where we had just been essentially disappeared immediately once we drove down the hill to more level ground. It was a pretty drastic change in weather conditions in a very short period of time but I was all for it.
The tea factory is situated in a beautifully picturesque location so I was more than happy to see the clear sunny skies with perfect visibility.
This location was probably the most scenic location that we experienced on our entire trip, which you might agree with once you see the pictures. Here we go, you tell me what you think.
The rows of tea, the cliffs and the ocean all topped off by fluffy clouds in a blue sky - does it get any better than that?
The tea plantation was originally in operation from 1920 to 1980 -approximately. It was later sold and restored in 1998 at which point it also became a museum.
They do free tours and give samples of their tea there and you don't need an reservation to take part. The tour wasn't anything too special but it was free and didn't take long so I thought that it was worth it. We basically walked into the building and someone came over to us and pointed at some chairs in front of a projector screen and said "sit there when those people are done and watch the video then go into the restaurant and someone will bring you a mug of tea." Simple and straight forward. Easy peasy.
The video was 5 minutes long and told the brief history of the plantation and factory, alternating between Portuguese and English. The video was somewhat interesting and it was only 5 minutes, so why not. There were a few pieces of historic equipment in there as well that were used in the production process but they weren't overly interesting to look at. I'd say that it was the equivalent of looking at a tractor or some other piece of farm equipment.
The plantation produces Orange Pekoe tea, the same as Gorreana. The sample that they brought out to us was broken leaf again. It was a little nicer then what we had at Gorreana, it actually had a little color to it, but it was basically flavorless just the same. It was free though so we weren't complaining. They also had other teas that you could try but I think you had to pay for them. We had already spent 10 minutes drinking our warm water so we didn't need anymore drinks at that point. If was also late afternoon and we would be heading to get a pre-dinner cocktail soon.
After the video and the tea we went back out to look over the grounds and landscape again. I found this spot with some hydrangeas bushes that were actually in bloom.
We saw a lot of hydrangea plants on the island but none had any flowers on them. These were the first.
We didn't spend a huge amount of time at the plantation. The tour and samples were pretty quick and the grounds were small compared to Gorreana so we couldn't go hiking or anything. Nonetheless I'm glad that we went. Like I mentioned previously, the view from the grounds was the best that we had seen for our entire trip.
