Knowing When to Quit

Of all strategies, knowing when to quit may be the best – Chinese Proverb

I started this post more than a year ago. It was not too long after I had written a Thanksgiving post in which I discussed the Power of Intention and how having an “attitude of gratitude” is necessary to nudge the universe in the direction of making your desires come true. The whole concept of giving thanks has a real purpose toward achieving success.

But at that time, I was also thinking about another important factor in success: recognizing when to quit, knowing when something simply is not going to work out the way you want, no matter how much effort, focus – or gratitude – you put into it. You have to be able to see when something is not working for you, when continuing along your current path is a waste of time, and when you need to turn around and move in a new direction. And when you realize it, you have to have the courage and will to take action.

I guess I was thinking about it back then because of a “relationship” that was feeling very empty and I knew wasn’t working. I had felt that it wasn’t working for a long time, and it had become especially clear early that summer, long before Thanksgiving. But I kept trying and thinking that a little more time would fix everything. And even though I knew in my gut that it wasn’t working, I kept hanging in there and hoping things would change. They didn’t. I hung on for far too long, allowed myself to be taken for granted and used far too much, and early this past summer I finally walked away – a year later than I should have.

But the point is that I did not quit when I should have, when I knew I was just pursuing the wrong thing. It was my mistake.

Winners Never Quit?

In our popular culture, the notion of never giving up is touted all the time. Social networks are filled with charming little memes telling us all to keep going, no matter what – to never quit. How many times have you seen the saying, “Winners never quit, and quitters never win”?  Enough to make it nauseating, I suppose. It’s a good sentiment, but after so much Internet overexposure, it’s become just another empty platitude.

But there is another saying that “Winners quit all the time; they just quit the right stuff at the right time.” By contrast then, losers stay with the wrong thing for far too long.  And it’s a fact that many people fail to reach their goals or realize success because they stay with the wrong thing for too long.

We see this all the time in work and careers, athletics, music, art, writing, scientific research, academic pursuits and – especially – in relationships. People keep trying for something, even after it’s become clear that it just isn’t going to work out.

I think I’ve been particularly guilty of this in my life, especially in relationships. Even worse than the situation I mentioned at the beginning of this post, earlier in my life I stayed with another “relationship” for a very, very long time. In the long run, all it did was give me false hope and keep me from finding real happiness with someone else.

I don’t blame the person involved; I blame only myself. I got out of it completely at one point, only to jump back in some years later, and I let it keep me hanging on for years. I should have known better and never looked back after I walked away the first time. It was my mistake. But, as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

On the other hand, I’ve had no problem quitting and moving on from jobs that I felt were not working out. I invested more than the usual single enlistment in a navy career before realizing that it wasn’t what I really wanted to do, but I did act on my feelings and got out to pursue another career.

Many people thought it was a bad move because if I had stayed for 20 years, I could have retired at 39 with a lifetime pension and then moved on to something else. That was a valid consideration, but my spirit could not wait; I never wanted a “career” in the navy, and I didn’t want to stay simply for the promise of future security.

And I walked away from a few other jobs when the spirit moved me, not capriciously, usually, but at the right times. When I wasn’t feeling fulfilled, when I didn’t feel like I was making progress, I had no problem taking a new path. I did that after eight years in a project management company in a move that brought me to Ukraine. It was a scary decision, and perhaps not the right one, but it was what I felt compelled to do because things were no longer working well at the company.

How Do You Know?

There are two opposite and competing principles at work here. One, as I’ve already described, is staying with something too long, not walking away when you should. The other is quitting something too soon and too easily, not giving it – or yourself – enough time to make it work. Here is where the notion of not giving up does come into play.

There are many inspiring stories of people who “didn’t give up” when their ideas were rejected or when they were told they were not good enough. Henry Ford, Walt Disney and Michael Jordan are just a few of the most famous examples. They kept going and became huge successes.

But one thing most of them have in common, which is rarely mentioned, is that, in fact, they did quit. They quit the paths that were not working and set themselves along new paths that eventually led to success. In some cases, they had to quit over and over again.

Walt Disney, for example, was told early in his life that he didn’t have what it took to be a journalist. He probably knew in his heart that it was true, so he quit that early career path and went in a different direction. If he had kept trying to be a journalist and beating his head against the wall, he might have been a complete failure in his life, and the Disney entertainment empire might never have been.

In fact, Disney tried and failed several times before he finally found success. But he knew when to quit, when to change direction, and he eventually found his right path. You could say that, in the macro sense, Disney never quit, while in the micro sense, he knew when to quit strategically and channel his energy in a new direction. But how did he know when to quit?

I suppose one could perform some kind of logical situation analysis, develop a set of measurable statistical markers, evaluate the numbers, and make a clear, fact-based determination as to what to do. But we are not robots, and we rarely look at life this way.

No matter how logical and programmed we try to be, it always comes down to intuition, that “gut feeling” I mentioned earlier. But having the gut feeling isn’t enough. You also have to have confidence that what your gut is telling you is right, because sometimes what you mistake for genuine intuition is something else entirely, an emotional reaction to some event or offense, and for a time it can block out the deeper understanding in your heart. But if you go deep enough, you know which it really is.

And if you have that gut feeling and have confidence that it is real, you still need to find the courage to act on the feeling, the strength to make a change. Change can offer feelings of hope and the freshness of a new direction, but it usually comes with a certain amount of fear as well. Even when we know in our hearts that we need to change, fear can hold us back. 

Despite that gnawing seed of discontent that tells us we need to make a change, we also enjoy a measure of safety and security in what we’ve grown used to, the way things are. While we recognize that something might not be right, we are afraid to upset the whole apple cart by making a change. So we do nothing.

So the recognition of what your gut is trying to tell you has to be matched by the willingness – the courage in some cases – to make the change that your intuition is calling for.

Alternatively, you can just tell your intuition to shut up and quit complaining.

Time for a Change?

So now here I am (again) wondering if Ukraine is something else that I have stayed with for too long. I seem to do this a lot around New Year.

Often, I think I probably should have quit Ukraine and gone on to something else a long time ago. And I wonder if I’ve just become used to life here, found a certain comfort level (if one can really call it “comfort”), and been too lazy (or afraid) to make the change.

Certainly, I have at least one valid reason to stay: a work niche that would be very hard to find anywhere else. But I often feel now like this is not enough. The last time I felt strongly that I should make the change to leave Ukraine, someone came along who made me feel like I had a reason to stay. But she wound up being the inspiration to start this post a year ago.

Maybe I simply was not supposed to leave yet, and she was just a tool of the universe to keep me here a little longer for whatever reason. As I survey the landscape now, there really is nothing and no one motivating me to stay, although I sure wish there was.

For now, there is just a unique and successful work niche, an inability (at the moment) to visualize what I would do next in another place, and perhaps some fear of taking the leap into a new unknown. But decision time is fast approaching; I'll have to choose my path before my current residency permit expires next summer. If I am going to quit, it’s going to have to be relatively soon.

So it all comes down to listening to your intuition, determining whether it’s really your truth, and then having the courage to make a decision and carry it out.

It’s time for my gut and I to have a serious talk.

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Missing the Good Stuff

It’s interesting how you can often find yourself missing something that you walked away from because you recognized it wasn’t good for you. It might have been a place you lived, a job, or most especially a person.

After some time, you look at this person or thing less critically and are able to remember the good aspects, the things you miss. If it’s a person, you miss the times you enjoyed together, moments that meant something important and left a deep memory. You miss the love that was shared, even if that love dissolved into disappointment and hurt.

Without thinking of the pain, you can still remember the look in her or his eyes when they were locked with your own, and you recall the exhilaration you felt in your heart as you sent messages through those eyes and deep into each other’s hearts. Warm memories surface of walking hand in hand, sharing meals, talking for hours, gently wiping away a tear, or holding each other quietly.

You might find yourself wishing that things could have been different, that you wouldn’t have had to walk away. You wish that the bad parts hadn’t been so bad that they overpowered the good parts. This is especially true if, at the time, you believed it had a promising future, that it was real, that it would last and be good for a long time. This is when it hurts the most. You wonder why it had to be this way. 

But it did, and there it is.

The same can be said of a job that was good for a time and then spiraled off into something that just wasn’t right for you any longer. Maybe you just outgrew it; maybe you felt stagnated. It might have been that conditions changed. Perhaps the specific work you had been doing wasn’t available anymore, and the new project or position you were given was not a good match for you. A new person or new people might have come in and changed the dynamic. Maybe something bad happened, a personal conflict or something similar.

At any rate, what had been working no longer worked, so you had to make the big decision to leave and find something new. But after some time, you can look back and remember the things you enjoyed, or even loved, about that job.

And it’s not just relationships or jobs. Maybe you got tired of living in a particular city, region or country because the weather got you down after some years, or perhaps a lot of new people moved in and changed what you had previously loved about the place. So you pack up and move to someplace new. And after some time, you’re able to look back fondly at the aspects of that earlier place that you miss. It could be the same for a house or apartment.

Whether it’s a relationship, a job, a place or something else, it’s natural to look back sometimes and remember the good stuff. In fact, it’s healthy: it’s better to focus on the positive than to always regard something in a negative light.

But even when you look back and smile, you have to keep it in perspective. You know it’s over, and there’s no going back. And even if there was a way to go back, you shouldn’t want to. You remember that, ultimately, it was bad for you, and that’s why it ended. We all have to move forward and leave the past behind.

But still, sometimes you can’t help missing the good stuff.

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Yeah, But I Am Thankful

The main point of Thanksgiving, of course, is to express gratitude for the good things in our lives. And as I wrote last year, it should also be about showing gratitude for what is yet to come.

Some people genuinely believe that life is great, so they find it very easy to talk about the things they are thankful for. Depending on their religious or spiritual beliefs, they might thank God, the universe, or no one in particular.

Others find it more difficult because of their life situations, but they can still use the holiday as a time to try to look at their lives a little more positively. That’s good, of course, but once the turkey-dinner leftovers are gone, the holiday cheer has passed, and they have to drag themselves back to work on Monday or face the gauntlet of Christmas-shopping crowds in the malls, their grateful feelings fall prey to the “life sucks” virus.

Of course, there are also those who can’t find anything in their lives to be thankful for, not even for one day. It is sad to feel like that, but I suppose at least they are not hypocrites.

Four Perspectives

Most of us sort of go back and forth to one extent or another in how we feel about the “blessings” or “curses” in our lives. But when people look at or talk about their lives, it seems there are basically four options:

1) Everything is great and perfect – the unrealistic “rose-colored glasses” approach.

2) Everything is terrible and my life sucks – the “paint everything black,” gloom and doom approach.

3) There are a lot of good things, sure, but I do have a lot of problems, which I guess we could call the “glass is half empty” approach.

4) Yeah, I have some issues like everyone else, but there are plenty of positives that outweigh the problems, which I guess we’d have to all the “glass is half full” approach.

We can dismiss the first two immediately because life is never so absolute. Nothing is perfect, and nothing is completely terrible. We can try to alter our attitudes to attain those absolutes, but it’s almost impossible to keep the world around us from injecting a bit of the opposite side. We can come close to convincing ourselves that everything is perfect, and that even the bad things that come our way from time to time – the imperfect – are a form of “perfection.”

We can manifest the negative absolute in our lives more easily, it seems, than the positive. But even the dourest and dark-minded person cannot completely shut out those occasional rays of sunshine that try to bring them out of it. Little glints of light can still make their way into the gloom.

More common, and realistic, are those who focus on one side, either the negative or positive, but acknowledge that the other side exists and exerts influence. But which side do we focus on, the upbeat or the downcast? I think for most of us, it tends to fluctuate depending on what’s happening in our lives or how long we’ve been living one way or the other. I know that this is how it is for me.

I like to believe that I live in the upbeat world – focusing on the positive while acknowledging that problems exist – more often than in the other. This blog is testament that I have spent some time in each, but I think that even my darker posts usually end with a positive message. And so it is here.

The fact is that, while I do have some problems, disappointments and even regrets, the things I should be thankful for – the positives – far outweigh the negatives that I sometimes dwell on. In one of my earliest posts, written more than four years ago, I wrote that I was a lucky guy. And I still believe that.

Things are Pretty Darned Good

Last year I wrote about being thankful for what is yet to come. I just reread that post, and it still applies, so I won’t repeat it. I’ll just mention a few things in the “yeah, there are some bad things, but the good is much better” category.

Yeah, I have some aches and pains. My right knee has become a chronic problem, and I frequently get stiffness in my back and hip. 

But, I don’t have any really serious health issues (as far as I know), I can still go out and do 50 km or more on my bike, swim for 30 minutes straight, and do a solid hour or so on the weights. And the, ummm... “essential equipment” still works perfectly. So no real worries about health. That is something to be thankful for!

Sure, I have reasons to complain about work, particularly the mindless corporate bureaucracy that tends to deaden the joy of any creative endeavor. And I’d like to be making more money, of course. 

But money has never been my first priority, and I have definitely had much worse jobs with even worse bureaucracy. I love teaching English, and I know I am very good at it. I enjoy my students every day, and I am blessed to share an office with three fantastic colleagues. That is a lot to be thankful for.

OK, so I live in a small apartment in an old building, and sometimes it is cold in winter, and sometimes there are noisy people around me. 

But it is actually pretty comfortable most of the time, and I have lived in worse places. What’s more, I have it a lot better than many others here in Kharkiv and certainly better than probably the majority of people around the world. And I have had the experience of living in a pretty luxurious home in the Denver suburbs, as well as in a fantastic cabin in a mountain forest. Most people can hardly even dream of that. More good stuff to be thankful for.

It’s true that the city I’ve lived in for most of the past nine years – Kharkiv – is a post-Soviet town that has a lot of dreary looking buildings, poor infrastructure, and a corrupt government. 

But it has its good points too, like a lot of really good restaurants and fun places to go. What’s more, I have been able to travel from here to points in Europe that would have cost me an arm and a leg to visit from Colorado. And I can even think about traveling east to points in Asia or the Indian Ocean. I love travel and adventure, so that’s a lot to be thankful for.

The only true disappointment and regret in my life has been that I’ve had to live so much of it alone and without that one special person, a special love to shower me with light and warmth, and to receive that same light and warmth that I’ve been so ready to give. The person who I thought for decades was “the one” wasn't. And a couple of more recent hopes were just figments of my wishful thinking. 

But, I have some of the most amazing and special friends a man could ask for, both here in Ukraine and back in the States. Every day they add some measure of light and warmth that makes it all worthwhile. And even as the rapidly passing years seem to make finding that special love less and less likely, I still have hope that it’s not impossible. As long as I have such friends as I have, I definitely have a lot to be thankful for.

And to add a cherry to the top of this gratitude cake, I have two absolutely amazing and talented daughters whom I love dearly, and we have relationships that sometimes I feel are stronger than I deserve. They and their families give me a universe to be thankful for.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot about coffee. I can drink coffee every day. Sometimes I can have it with Bailey’s. That is a cupful of delicious stuff to be thankful for.

Let’s see if I can remember all of this the next time I get a little down and start to think that things aren’t so great. In fact, things are really pretty darned good.

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The Post-Vacation Blues

After a phenomenal vacation that challenged my senses and emotions, I returned to Kharkiv. And my heart sank.

It wasn’t Kharkiv’s fault. The disappointment started, on a small scale, when we left Ponta Delgada, and it grew slowly as we made our way back to Ukraine over several days. It became palpable when we got to Kyiv. Just being in the arrival area of Boryspil Airport, after going through airports in places like Lisbon and Paris, was a bit of a letdown.

We spent about four hours trying to “rest” on lightly padded bench seats in a corner of the airport terminal that was brightly lit, noisy and cold. But even this was better than waiting around in the train station; Kyiv’s train station is awful, especially in the wee hours of the morning. It’s a place to be avoided.

And we mostly managed to do just that. After a 45-minute bus trip to the station, our wait for the train was mercifully short, and we were soon onboard. Still, the train was taking us on the last leg of the trip back to Kharkiv, and it was a little sad.

I truly felt that I was back in my dour reality on the taxi ride from the Kharkiv train station to my apartment just after noon that Saturday. The usual sights and sounds that have long been part of my everyday life were a stark reminder that my “Vacation of a Lifetime” had become a memory, more like a dream than anything tangible.  

At one point the taxi turned up Kosmicheskaya Street, passed one of my favorite restaurants, Trattoria, and then turned north on Nauka Avenue (formerly Lenin Avenue). That’s when it reality hit me like a brick to the head. I was riding up a street that I see multiple times every week and had traversed hundreds of times in the past, perhaps even more: the same shops and buildings, the same traffic, the same marshrutkas, the same badly parked cars, the same people on the street. More than anything else, this shouted that the vacation was over.

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In a day and a half, I would be back in my office doing the same things I did before, dealing with the same corporate bureaucracy, the same pressures, the same worries, the same lonliness – the same life.

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I was back in Kharkiv – back to the same small apartment in the same gray building, and all the same little things about my life here that made the two-week escape so wonderful. In a day and a half, I would be back in my office doing the same things I did before, dealing with the same corporate bureaucracy, the same pressures, the same worries, the same lonliness – the same life.

Vacations are supposed to give us a break from the stresses of our work and life and let us enjoy a different experience for a while so that we can come back with renewed energy. But often, after an especially good vacation, we come back to a reality that just seems to swallow up whatever good impressions and energy we might have gained. And that’s how I felt.

It’s About the Speed of Time

Maybe the problem is time and the speed at which it passes. During those early days of a vacation, when you are wide-eyed with your first wonderful impressions, you know you still have more great days ahead of you, and it’s all good. In the back of your mind you know it’s going to pass quickly, but you try not to think about it and just enjoy the moment. It’s joyous, and you feel at peace.

As the vacation winds down, you start to realize how quickly the time has just whizzed by, and it can start to take away a little of the luster. You know that it’s going to be over soon, and you’ll have to go back. You start to think about how quickly the time has passed, and you feel like you’ve been robbed.

And once you have returned, you look back in amazement at just how fast that wonderful time transformed from a present-moment reality to a wistful memory, something more like a dream. You have photos and mementos of your trip, but it’s not part of your reality any longer. Yep, time is a thief, and you've been robbed!

The irony of time is that it seems there is never an end to our humdrum, workaday lives. But special times, like great vacation trips, are over in the blink of an eye. I suppose this is related to the accelerated passing of time I first wrote about two years ago in a New Year post called, Life at the Speed of Time.

Beat the Blues – Plan Another Vacation

Seven weeks have passed since I got back to Kharkiv, and I am still in awe of those two wonderful weeks in Portugal. I think less now about feeling let down, and I genuinely cherish the memories. When my head is in the right place, as it usually is, those memories are a bulwark to help keep my everyday life from bringing me down. It works.

Maybe it was a mental reaction to counter the blues, but almost as soon as I was back, I started thinking about another vacation in the future. To add some spice to it, I have been imagining how I might create something even better than the Portugal trip.

I had a pretty nice, although short, vacation to northern Italy in January 2015, and in August of that year I went on an all-inclusive vacation in Turkey that was much better than the Italy trip. The vacation in Portugal FAR outshone the Turkey trip in every way possible, so it’s certainly possible to put together a new adventure that could even surpass this latest trip.

I’ve started thinking about Hawaii (especially Maui), or maybe going in the other direction to visit the Seychelles, Thailand, Nepal or Sri Lanka. It’s crossed my mind that I might like to return to an old haunt like Japan or Peru, and I’d certainly enjoy seeing more of Argentina than I did during my one short working trip to Patagonia. And, of course, I still have unfinished business in Ireland.

But so much hinges on what the future holds, and at the moment I have no clue. After almost a decade in Ukraine, it does seem as though the time to leave may finally be approaching, in which case, exotic (and expensive) trips don’t seem to make much sense when I would need to save as much cash as possible to relocate.

But I truly don’t know yet what I want to do, so I am still free to dream of hiking in the lush green hills of Maui, basking on a beach in the Indian Ocean, revisiting the land of the rising sun, or exploring Buenos Aires. And dreams are always good to have. They keep the post-vacation blues at bay.

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A Mountain Boy in an Island Paradise - Vacation of a Lifetime, Part 4

“I am surrounded on all sides by the ocean, and I am happy.”

I love the mountains. To hike among towering peaks; sit on a grassy hillside and look out upon a beautiful valley framed by forested hills and snow-covered summits; listen to the peaceful sounds of aspen leaves rustling in a light breeze, a gurgling mountain stream, early-morning songbirds or a buzzing hummingbird; to take in a lung full of pure, fresh, crisp air; to feel the sun on my face, close my eyes, and just be – this has long been my idea of heaven on Earth.

Nowhere has that dream been more real than in Colorado. I’ve been in the Appalachian hills of New England, the jagged heights of the Peruvian Andes, the forested highlands of Hokkaido, and a few other ranges, but no mountains have spoken to my spirit like the Colorado Rockies, especially around the home I owned before I came to Ukraine.

But I was a latecomer to high-country bliss. I grew up in eastern Massachusetts, not far from Cape Cod and the Atlantic Ocean. There were no mountains. It wasn’t really such a long way to visit the Berkshire highlands of western Massachusetts, White Mountains in New Hampshire, the Green Mountains in Vermont, or the Longfellow Range in Maine. But my parents were not big on traveling, so we never went to such places when I was growing up.

Before the Mountains there was the Ocean

Instead, our vacations were to the beaches and seaside close to home: the near parts of Cape Cod and the area around Plymouth. Even in this, we rarely got out to the outer cape, where the open Atlantic can freely deliver its pounding surf on the eastward-facing beaches. They preferred the more sheltered and calm beaches of Buzzard’s Bay or Cape Cod Bay. Only rarely did we venture out on day trips to the outer cape or even to Provincetown on the very end of the cape, and we never went out to the islands: Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard.

On those rare occasions when we did go out on the cape, seeing the “real” Atlantic was always a treat, and I marveled at the immensity of the ocean and the power of its surf upon the land. The Atlantic Ocean enthralled me, and I never lost that feeling. When I was old enough to drive and go off on my own, I went to the outer cape more often, and I took the ferry across to the islands. I went to the coast of Maine where the Atlantic waves have been carving up the rocky shore for millions of years. I loved all of it.

And more near-ocean living followed long before I got my first real taste of the mountains. I spent a few months close to the shore of central New Jersey, and had more opportunities to visit beaches along the American East Coast from Maine to Virginia.

Guam is Good

Then, I had my first real island experience: an 18-month Navy assignment on Guam in the western Pacific. Island living was something entirely new for this impressionable kid in his early 20s, and it had a significant impact on my young life. It was a turning point in many ways.

Guam is tropical; it’s always warm, sometimes hot, and it’s always humid. And the water temperature is always in the mid-80s F (around 28-29 C). It rains a lot, especially between July and November. The vegetation was very different from anything I had known before, the native people were very different, practically everything was different. And for a young guy like I was, it was a great adventure.

What made life on the island especially unique was that it was small. Guam is only 30 miles (50 km) long and 12 miles across at its widest point (four miles across at its narrowest). On any given day, you can watch the sun rise out of the Pacific Ocean in the morning, go about your business all day, and the watch it set into the South China Sea in the evening. You can’t go very far on such an island, but surprisingly, we always found a lot to do, so we were never bored.

Guam came into my life at a time when I needed it. The exotic nature of the environment, together with our youthful need for fun and our raging hormones, fueled the “sex, booze and rock and roll” lifestyle (no drugs) that my friends and I enjoyed for most of that time. We partied hard, but we also enjoyed the beaches, jungle and other features of the island: “boonie stomps” to old caves, Talofofo Falls, the ocean-fed pools at Inarajan, and more. I even went on a week-long ocean adventure on a sailing yacht.

There were some bad points too, like a big earthquake during my first month, the supertyphoon that ravaged the island, and loosing a friend who stupidly went out from Ritidian Point on a surfboard and never returned. But that island, with its amazing beauty and the ocean all around, still visits my memories and dreams on occasion.

Even after Guam, the ocean wasn’t done with me, and the mountains had yet to beckon. I lived for almost a year in Monterey, California, where Monterey Bay and the Pacific Ocean were a regular part of my life. And for six years in Japan, the ocean was never very far away, although I rarely visited it.

After Japan, I came to Colorado full-time (I had already been an official resident for more than six years). Here, I discovered the joy and beauty of the mountains, and I pretty much forgot about the ocean. The Rocky Mountains were just so awesome that I didn’t need the ocean. I sort of forgot about the ocean, and in particular my memories of the island faded.

A New Island

Many years later, I found myself on an island about the same size of Guam: Sao Miguel in the Azores. It is a different kind of island, but it still brought back a lot of memories, and it reminded me of the things I enjoyed the most about those 18 months on that little bit of tropical land in the Western Pacific: lush vegetation and ocean views from almost anywhere.

Sao Miguel was the last phase of my “Vacation of a Lifetime” in Portugal. It is the largest of the nine islands in the Azores, all of which are essentially the tops of huge volcanic mountains that rise from the depths of the ocean.

We spent four days on the island before returning to Ukraine. It was the best part of the whole trip. I had thoroughly enjoyed my days in Lisbon, and experiencing the magnificence of the Atlantic Ocean along the south coast of Portugal was amazing. But Sao Miguel was special; it was almost magical.

The first thing you notice once you start to tour Sao Miguel is how green it is. Everywhere you look, on the hillsides or the pasturelands, it is amazingly green. It is, perhaps, the greenest place I have ever seen. There is a beautiful contrast of the brilliant green of the island with the deep blue of the ocean. And in so many places, the green is dotted with flowers of various types and colors. It’s a feast for the eyes.

We arrived in Ponta Delgada, the island’s main city, on a Sunday afternoon and quickly got checked into our guesthouse, Atlantic Home Azores, which I wrote about in Part One of this series. Once we got settled, we had plenty of time to explore the nearby parts of Ponta Delgada. Our island “home” was just across the street from the harbor and marina, and we had a fantastic view of the ocean, as well as the hills to the east.

We walked the length of the main street, checked out the locations for our whale-watching excursion and our car rental, went through a number of shops, and found a decent place for dinner. We also located a small grocery store right in our complex – perfect for getting what we needed to make our own meals.

Day One: Whales and the Lake of Fire

Monday morning was all about cruising out on the open ocean in search of whales. This three-hour trip on a fast catamaran set the tone for the whole visit to Sao Miguel because it was a unique and special activity that got our spirits soaring. We cruised far out from the shore where the waters are rough and the whales are plentiful.

We learned that these tours often go out without seeing nary a flipper, although they almost always manage to locate some dolphins. And we were lucky: we came across several pods of resident sperm whales. It is difficult to get close to them, and we had to settle for seeing their backs and flukes from a distance, but at least we did see them.

After trailing several pods for more than an hour, we broke off and made for an area where dolphins were pretty common. Again, we were not disappointed and were treated to a fun show of 50-100 dolphins swimming along with our boat, crossing our bow, and frolicking in front of us.

After the cruise, we got our rental car and set off for sights in the central part of the island. The main focus was Lagoa do Fogo (Lake of Fire), one of three large lakes formed in the craters of old (but still nominally active) volcanoes. But we started at a small oceanside community called Lagoa, just a short drive from Ponta Delgada. We noticed there, as we did in most coastal areas, the distinct difference in the coastal landscape compared to the mainland. The rocks are mostly black, as they are young volcanic rocks. And the sand along the beaches is mostly black volcanic sand.

The drive up into the hills surrounding Lagoa do Fogo was breathtaking. Here is where we first saw just how green everything is. The hills on Sao Miguel are all volcano formed, and many are extremely steep. As a result, the roads have to weave their ways up the slopes, with a lot of S-turns along the way. The government has constructed many viewing points along these roads, places where you can safely pull your car off the road, walk around a bit, and enjoy absolutely mind-blowing views. Our first views of Lagoa do Fogo did just that.

When we finally had our fill of natural beauty for one day, we returned to our home base and found a place to park the car. Then we did some grocery shopping and made our own amazing dinner of spaghetti with linguica, a Portuguese sausage I remembered from my childhood. It was a fantastic first day.

Day Two: The East

We had a romantic idea to get up early one day and drive to the eastern tip of the island to catch the sunrise. But getting up early was difficult, particularly because the bronchial irritation that hit me in the Algarve had gotten worse, and the coughing made it hard to get a good night’s sleep. Still, my friend managed to get up and take some nice sunrise pictures from Ponta Delgada.

Day one had been focused on the center of the island, so we decided to go to the eastern end for day two. The main targets were the volcanic Lagoa das Furnas and the hot spring baths in the town of Furnas. After making ourselves a great breakfast in the guesthouse, we were off for Furnas.

Like the day before, we drove up from the coast into a series of gorgeous green hills and had to wind our way to the small town of Furnas. Along the way, we also had to stop for a parade of cows. Dairy cows are big business on Sao Miguel, and they have the right of way on the roads.

We found signs to the Caldeiras das Furnas and Lagoa das Furnas, and in no time, we were there. Like Lagoa do Fogo, Lagoa das Furnas is a large lake formed inside an old volcanic crater. But there are some notable differences. First, the water in Furnas is green, not deep blue as in the Lake of Fire. And there are more active signs of volcanism around Furnas: the Caldeiras.

The Caldeiras are a series of hot spots next to the lake and include holes from which scalding hot water bubbles up from the ground and others where boiling mud can be seen shooting out. And there is a lot of steam. The area of the Caldeiras is a tourist spot with a wooden walkway that allows visitors to safely get up close and personal with the water and mud geysers, a nice park area, paddle boats on which to go out on the lake, and of course, some small souvenir shops and food stands.

Local restaurants prepare food in special pots buried in the hot ground of the Caldeiras. As we walked along the boardwalk, we saw many spots where food was cooking, all marked with signs advertising the restaurants.

Our next stop was the famous hot bath resort in the town of Furnas: Poca da Dona Beija. To our surprise, the people running the place were from Ukraine and greeted us in Ukrainian. We changed and spent an hour or so enjoying the various pools in which hot geothermal water was mixed with a cool flow to maintain a comfortable temperature of about 40 degrees C (104 F). The water as quite rich in iron, which cast an orangish color on every place where the water flowed.

After the hot springs, we made our way leisurely down out of the hills and back to the coast at a placed named Povoacao, which was the original main settlement on the island centuries ago. The rest of our day consisted mainly of driving eastward along the south coast, around the east end, and then westward along the north coast. Of course, we stopped repeatedly at one memorizing vantage point after another to take in the beauty and, of course, take pictures.

As the afternoon drew late and evening was not far off, we decided to look for a fishing village called Porto Formoso on the north coast. We had been advised by the very friendly and helpful owner of our guesthouse that there was an excellent fish restaurant there that always had the freshest fish. We found Casa de Pasto O Amaral, but were a bit surprised at what we found.

When we entered the place, it looked like we had simply walked into a neighborhood bar, and we were not sure what to make of it. But the man behind the bar asked if we were there to eat, and he motioned to a doorway that led to a staircase. At the top of the stairs was a large dining room that was open to the street along one side. We took a table with a view of the street below.

Next, the waiter came to our table, not with a menu but with a board, on which were three fresh, uncooked fish. We each chose one fish, and the waiter went away to have them cooked up. In the meantime, we enjoyed an appetizer of fresh bread, cheese that was sort of like mozzarella, and a spicy sauce.

Finally, our fish arrived served with potatoes and a bit of sliced vegetables. With the exception of salmon, tuna and perhaps fish and chips, I’m not much of a fish eater. I’ve always been particularly averse to eating a whole fish with a head, little bones, and all that. But this was quite good, and I liked it.

And with that, once again it was time to head back to the guesthouse and rest up for our last full day on the island. That night, we saw that a huge cruise ship had come into the harbor. Its size and bright lights added a little something extra to the allure of the harbor at night, but it also meant that there would be a lot more tourist buses on the road the next day.

Day Three: The West

There was still one more volcanic remnant to check out: Lagoa das Sete Cidades, a series of lakes created in an old volcanic crater. The two main lakes, Lagoa Azul (Blue Lake) and adjoining Lagoa Verde (Green Lake), are separated only by a narrow bridge/road from which you can take in the beauty of the whole valley. There are other lakes as well, but we didn’t get to see them because on this day, we had some low clouds and thick fog.

As always, the drive up the hillsides to the top of the crater was amazing in its own right. And when we got to the point where we could see the lakes, it was nothing short of phenomenal. But the best part was getting down to the lakes, where we finally decided to take some photos of the car with the top down. It was about time.

After seeing the lakes of the western volcano, we made for another famous site, Termas da Ferraria at the very western tip of the island. Here there is a small cove where water heated deep underground by volcanic forces rises and enters the ocean. Ocean waves surge into the cove and mix with the hot water to create a fantastic bathing experience.

After changing our clothes, we walked carefully on the volcanic rocks that were sharp in some places and slippery in others until we got to the ladders that allowed access to the cove. There were a series of ropes strung across the cove so that bathers could hold their places, more or less, and not be either pushed up against rocks or pulled out to sea.

The water temperature is never constant, but it tends to be warm more often than cool. As the currents in the cove ebb and flow with the movements of the ocean, you feel hot surges of geothermal water followed by cooler waves from the sea. And all the time you are buffeted to and fro by the waves. It was really a blast.

The complex has a restaurant and spa, so after showering (cold) and changing, we had a nice lunch. Seafood, of course. Then we took off again, this time for the north central coast and what they call the “Tea Country.” We didn’t find exactly what we were looking for – a tea plantation and factory – but we did find more awesome ocean views as we went through several northern towns. 

Driving back to Ponta Delgada was a little sad as we knew we were facing our last evening on the island and the vacation overall. It was coming to an end. The next day would be about returning the car, heading to the airport and starting our journey back to Ukraine. We made dinner at the guesthouse, and I even did laundry. 

The Last Day and the Long Trip Home

The next day, my travel companion made the most of the time available by walking around Ponta Delgada and spending some time at a swimming and sunbathing area near the marina. But I was too exhausted to do more than return the car and then stay at the guesthouse until late afternoon when it was time to go to the airport. Dealing with my bronchial irritation and the associated coughing, the lack of sleep, and a few other issues had left me more tired than I had imagined. I was wiped out.

And so we returned. We left Ponta Delgada on Thursday afternoon, had one more overnight in a guesthouse in Lisbon, left Lisbon Friday morning and got back to Kharkiv around mid-day on Saturday. In between, there were planes and trains and taxis and one bus ride, as well as killing five hours or so on hard bench seats in Boryspil Airport. We were tired, but we survived.

And just like that, it was all over except for the memories.

What’s the Point?

I started this post writing about the mountains and how I feel when I am graced with their power. I realize that the same is true of the ocean. The difference has probably been that I’ve spent more time alone in the mountains, more time to experience that power without distraction, to let spirit move deeply within me. I had some of that long ago when I was on Guam, but it has become hard to really remember it. I think I just haven’t given the ocean the same opportunity to awaken my soul.

Spending time in such beautiful places on Sao Miguel, as well as the beaches of southern Portugal, gave me glimpses of the peace and spiritual connection that one can receive from the ocean if one’s mind and heart are in the right place, and if enough time is allowed. We didn’t have that much time – we were on the move almost constantly.

But I saw enough and felt enough to know that I want more. I’ve long thought that I would like to spend a week or so on the west coast of Ireland, just looking out at the ocean. Perhaps spending time on one of Ireland’s Aran Islands would be even better. I often imagine the inspiration I might get from just being in the presence of the ocean in this way, inspiration to think, to write, and perhaps inspiration to find answers to some of my biggest personal questions.

Of course, I also like being warm, hanging out in shorts and t-shirts, or even being able to swim in warm water. That is something Ireland definitely does not offer. So maybe a trip to a warm island is in order. I’ve been thinking recently about the Seychelles in the Indian Ocean, Bali in Indonesia, the Canary Islands of Spain, or even Maui in the Hawaiian Islands. Have to save up for that kind of trip.

Perhaps a return to the Azores is in the future. There is more to see on Sao Miguel, and there are other islands to explore.

I have other thoughts about the trip, about what it meant, and about the future. But I think I will save those for one last post, sort of an epilog to the whole experience.

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Other parts of this series:

Part 1 - Lisbon, Sintra and Cascais

Part 2 - The South Coast and Algarve

Part 3 - Southwestern Spain and Back to the Ocean