Bikepacking in the Azores

This time I managed to bike up the first big hill from Velas without breaking any bike parts. Our goal was the north side of the island and the fajãs, both home to amazing waves.

This time I managed to bike up the first big hill from Velas without breaking any bike parts. Our goal was to bike to the north side of the island and visit Fajã dos Cubres and Fajã de Santo Cristo, both home of amazing waves. Fajã means a small flat piece of land located by the sea formed by rocks fallen from cliffs.

The surf forecast looked promising, not big but nice size waves with offshore wind. It’s just that, to go to the other side of the island it’s a long and steep bike ride and we were very heavy at this point because we had to buy food for a week. Down at the fajã there were no food stores, only a cafe that was not always open, so we had to gear up a lot to manage to stay for some days.

It was heavy to bike with all the extra food. I think we biked up more than 800m that day. Tired of biking we arrived to the road signs pointing out our destination. We were close, just a 600m descent to reach the sea. We could do it, from here it was just going down.

We started to roll down but didn’t make it too far, blinded by an amazing view we just had to stop and take in what lay in front of us. When you come down to Fajã dos Cubres you can’t drive any longer. Only by foot, bike or with authorized quad mobiles you can reach the other Fajãs.

The beauty of this place is hard to describe in words. When you sit on your surfboard waiting for the next wave and just observe the scenario around you it’s just magic. Specially when you made your way here by bike and you have put in a lot of effort to come to where you are, it makes you really be in peace with yourself.

On top of that, for the most part we just surfed alone, picking whatever wave we could surf.

We stayed down till our last meal, that was just a freshly picked spinach soup, and we knew by then we needed to go and get some proper food.

It was a long steep way to bike all the way back to the top, and without eating proper food it would be more difficult. But we were saved by a local guy called Beto that we had been hanging with during our stay. He had been sleepless all night thinking of our way up and insisted to strap our bikes and boards on his quad and drive us all the way up. We’re forever thankful for that!

After biking for some time we recharged in a mini market buying a lot of snacks, our sugar levels got up and we started biking again. It felt that the trip was moving towards the end, but there was one thing we still wanted to do before leaving the Azores.