Whales and Paintings

"Last week a blue whale passed through here... More or less 30 meters..." said the skipper of our boat. At once I started imagining how it would be to be near the largest animal on planet Earth. Whales have always fascinated me. First I was a bit afraid of them, maybe because of the "Moby Dick" series I used to watch, but afterwards I began to get fascinated with them, as I understood that these gigantic animals are apparently docile, and they want nothing more than to follow their own way. When I got to the Faial island, in the Azores, it was, therefore, natural that the only thing going through my mind was the moment I would go aboard one of the several whale watching boats that leave Horta harbor daily.

These boats normally do two trips a day, one during the morning, another during the afternoon, but it's best to make reservations for the trip as soon as we get to the island because if the weather is not good enough (and we never know how it will be in the Azores), the boats won't leave the harbor. If we have reservations, we get warned previously about the weather and we can go on the following trip.

Me and my traveling companions reserved one of the morning trips, and we would have to wake up by sunrise. As I woke up I went to the balcony of my room to check on the weather. I was gifted with a soft breeze and with the beautiful silhouette of the Pico island, on the other side of the canal, lit by the soft light of dawn, and cut against a magnificent violet-hued sky. Everything was in place for a memorable trip.

Nowadays whale watching trips rely on much of the experience acquired through several decades of whale hunting (which is now forbidden). The watch towers that used to direct the whalers to the location of the animals are now used to guide the whale watching boats, in order to allow the visitors to be side by side with these Azores icons. That's how the skippers know where to take the boats and where to look for the animals.

Even with these directions, and after we arrived to a spot where some whales were supposed to be, near Pico island, I was looking in all directions and all I was seeing was the ocean. We stopped a few seconds until the skipper's trained eyes spotted something. I looked at the direction he was pointing and still saw nothing, until suddenly I noticed a small cloud rising from the sea. A whale had just surfaced to breathe. We got as close as the safety rules allow and we noticed the gray body of a sperm whale gliding in the waves. "This one must be around 12 meters. Not bad but you should have been here last week..." said the skipper, used to measuring the animals with just his eyes. For me, the size was irrelevant. What mattered was that for the first time I had the chance of seeing in its natural habitat one of the animals I always admired.
"Gonna dive !!!" cried the skipper. And like a tamed animal, the whale vanished, leaving in the surface only its tail fin, in one of the images that has become a trademark in the Azores postcards. We waited for some time until it came back, we took some photos, and it disappeared in the depths of the ocean.

After the morning emotions we returned to the town of Horta. Having nothing to do in the afternoon I decided to go for a stroll in the marina. I have been in several harbors and marinas in several places of the world, but the Horta marina has an atmosphere that is hard to find in other places. It's one of the only places to stop in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which means it's a mandatory resting place for crews of boats of all types from all over the world, from scientific research vessels, to sailing yachts in transatlantic voyages. It's common to walk around the marina and to meet people from all over the world, some resting, some taking care of their boats, others keeping the tradition of leaving a painting on the walls or pavement of the marina.

No one knows how this tradition started but it's told that it began with the superstition that the crew that did not leave their drawing in the marina, would not return from the next trip. And now, looking at the hundreds of drawings and paintings in the concrete, it's easy to understand why sailors are said to be superstitious. Some leave maps with the trip they are making, others leave birds or cartoon-like paintings, and others just leave their names, but all say that they were there at least one time.

After walking for a while I chose a spot, put down my backpack, and sat on the painted wall. The early summer sun was heating my skin just enough to balance the cool sea breeze. I picked up a book, lied down on the wall and started to read. As I read a printed story, I could not stop thinking about the images in the marina and the thousands of unprinted, maybe even untold stories they represented. Stories of voyages around the world, of faraway places and different cultures, and, who knows, maybe even some stories of encounters with blue whales.

John's magic place

For a curious, little european guy arriving for the first time in Australia, particularly if that guy is interested in all he sees around him, the feeling is almost that of a child entering a toy store for the first time. Everything is new, everything is different. While I was driving my rental white Toyota from the airport to the Blue Mountains National Park, about 100 Km west of Sydney, everything was catching my attention: the cars, the advertising outdoors, the birds flying near the road (yes, you can easily see cockatoos in the city), the people walking, busy in their everyday life.

When I arrived at the Blue Mountains, and after spending a good half an hour under the shower in my room, in the Katoomba guesthouse where I would be spending the next three nights, I had already forgotten how tired I was from the almost 26 hours of flying from Lisbon to Sydney. I put on my backpack, and I was off to look for the views and landscapes that earned the Blue Mountains a place among the Unesco World Heritage sites.

Despite the name, the Blue Mountains are not mountains in the true sense of the word, but big red and orange sandstone cliffs rising majestically from a huge eucalyptus forest that spreads out as far as the eye can see. The name comes from the blue mist that we can see rising from the forest when we look at this magnificent landscape from a distance (it's actually caused by the release of certain types of oil from the eucalyptus trees). Other than the cliffs and rock formations, of which the Three Sisters, near Katoomba, are the more famous, this area has also some water courses that carve deep narrow canyons, or tumble on high waterfalls. At least that's what was written on my travel guide, because when I got to Govett's Leap, the 300 m waterfall was just a trickle of water running down the cliff (it had been a dry year).

Having missed what I was looking for, I was just preparing to go away when I noticed some funny looking birds that were not afraid to come close to the few people that remained in the lookout. Once again, curiosity took the best of me and I couldn't resist asking a local man what were the names of those birds. I can't remember the name (it was one of those strange aboriginal names), but John, the man I talked to, said they were quite common.

"Do you know what I'm doing here?" he asked as I was preparing to leave. Shyly I said I didn't, and he said he was there because it was a special day and that was a special place. It was the day of the month John went there to meet his wife, that had passed away some time ago. I listened carefully as he told me that his wife had asked him that her ashes should be spread in that place she loved so much if she died before him. I listened while he told me he had rented an helicopter to grant the last wish of someone that had meant so much to him. From then on, John visited that place every month, always in that same day, to pay his respects to his lost companion, and surely to remember the good times they spent together. We stood on the lookout for some time, side by side, talking, both turned to the amazing landscape that had suddenly gained a new life with the story John had just told. After a while we said goodbye with a vigorous handshake, and with the usual wishes of mutual happiness.

I did not see the waterfall of which my guidebook spoke so well, but I left that place certain that I had left a magical place, at least magical for someone, and I'm glad that someone decided to share its magic with me. I couldn't help but think that every person has their story to tell, and many people really wish to share theirs with someone. Sometimes all it takes is a little curious european guy willing to listen to them...

Rooftops of Santorini

September 2003, town of Fira, island of Santorini, Greece. After a wonderful traditional dinner, accompanied with a refreshing white wine (perfect to deal with the heat), and shared with the sound of a guitar and a bouzouki (a kind of greek mandolin), the night was promising another stroll, in search of the fun that most of the younger tourists find in the several bars and clubs that claim the narrow streets of the small town.

We were four: me, Ana, Tom, Belinda. Ana is a good friend that convinced me to go to Greece with her and go island hopping. The last two, australian, respectively from Melbourne and Sydney, were two of those random friendships one can make in trips like this. One minute we are perfect strangers staying in the same hostel, the next minute we are talking about our lives. It was our last night on the island, we already knew some of the bars and clubs from the previous night, and quickly we concluded that we did not want to go to a place where we felt like canned sardines, because even at night there was some heat. "What if we go grab some beers and go out somewhere ?" Tom's idea, a typically australian one, immediately deserved everyone's agreement. We entered a store and picked up some Heinekens (the only brand available), and some Baccardi Breezers (for the ladies), but we quickly understood it wouldn't be easy to find a place we could be comfortable, due to the night buzz of the town.

It was then that, turning a corner, in a poorly lit and somewhat faraway street we found the perfect place: the roof of an abandoned house. And all we had to do to get there was cross a small wall. Most of the towns in the island of Santorini are white spots, built in levels in big black cliffs overlooking the Mediterranean. From any street it is easy to see the houses in the level below (and reach their roofs, with some luck). The cliff, shaped like a crescent, and the crater it is facing, in the middle of the ocean, keeps in our minds that the land we step on was formed by a cataclysm, an eruption of a volcano that is still active today.

At night, though, we could not see the crater, we could not see the ocean. We knew they were there but the only landscape we could see was a black abyss, occasionally painted by the lights of a passing ship down below. It was like the roof was hanging in the middle of nothing. At our side, the town lights were lighting up part of the cliff and hiding the stars from our view, even though there was not a single cloud in the sky. A fresh breeze was blowing, surely a gift of the gods, to help us deal with the heat. If what we wanted was some isolation from the town's night life, we could not have made a better choice.

For hours, I can't remember how many, we talked, we laughed, we shared some of our stories and experiences. I vaguely remember Tom and Belinda saying they were physiotherapists, and Tom mentioning he was working in London. I mentioned my work as an engineer and the passion for photography. Ana mentioned she was an english teacher. I can't recall much more of our conversation, but it was not important. The important thing was that one night, four strangers from opposite sides of the world, joined together on a roof hanging in the middle of nothing and, detached from reality, forgot their worries and stopped being strangers for some time.

There's actually a big world out there...

Some years ago I was walking in the streets of Dublin with another little guy when someone noticed the cameras on our shoulders and asked us if we were photographers. We said we were, although not professionals. "That's not important, what matters is that you're taking photos". The guy was Geo, an american photographer who was working on his project of photographing the atmosphere of hostels and the world of backpacking. We talked for about half an hour, and in the end he gave us some leaflets about his project and invited us to go and watch his exhibition in a nearby hostel, which we did.

A month ago I was sorting through all the papers I keep in my laptop case and I found the leaflets Geo gave me in Dublin. I went to his website and browsed through his "The point of traveling" photographs. Suddenly I realized that he's right, his photos somehow feel right. The points of traveling, or at least some of them, are to enjoy ourselves, to discover new worlds, and to share those discoveries with the people that are important to us. I remembered my journeys, and the stories that took place in them, and noticed that most of those stories I kept to myself. So I decided to find a place where I could share those stories.

I can't imagine if someone will find the stories I will be posting here interesting or not. The only thing that matters to me is that they happened as I was discovering the big world out there. And of course, these are just the beginning because there is still a lot to discover. Thinking about this I remembered the lyrics of a song by The Kings of Convenience called "Summer in the Westhill". At some point it goes

"Now I know there is a world beyond the small place I was coming from.
I feel at home here, in the middle of nowhere."

Those lines pretty much sum up what I feel about the world. It's a big place, and I feel at home, precisely when I'm somewhere (or nowhere), letting it all in, exploring it and trying to discover what it has to offer. And of course sharing what I can with my friends and the people I care about.

One last thing about the language of the posts. Being portuguese, I don't mean to write in english to sound pretentious or to reach most people. I love my language and the only reason I don't write in it is because some of the stories I'll be posting have characters in them. And these characters are actually real people I met while travelling and most of them don't speak portuguese. So it seems logical to me that, if some of these people actually read these stories, they can at least understand what are my thoughts about the experiences I went through with them.