Although I am by no means a morning person, I must say that as our plane was descending into Ponta Delgada in the Azores, there was a beautiful sunrise that could be seen through the windows on the other side of the Airbus A321neo LR that had taken us from Toronto through the night. Starting from the horizon and going up there were bands of deep red, then yellow, then green, then light blue and then the sky above that was midnight blue. Gradually the bands of color expanded as we continued on our approach to a landing on the verdant island of the Azores where Ponta Delgada is located. It seems to me altogether fitting that the Azores, located where they are, should have such a spectacular dawn as we were in the process of arriving there.

During my trip, I sat next to a friendly elderly Azorean gentleman who sat across the aisle of the plane (there were three seats on each side) from his equally elderly wife. Throughout the course of the flight, when I was not catnapping, we attempted sometimes successfully to communicate through his broken English and fluent but unusual Portuguese accent and my broken Portuguese and less broken Spanish, with occasional English thrown in for good measure. Throughout the course of the flight, we not only commented on the gorgeous dawn, but also about the timing of the meal service (a tasty dinner of steak, potatoes and vegetables with pasta salad, a roll, cheesecake, and a package of Azorean cookies) as well as the frequent drink service, the gentleman’s wearing a mask because of sickness, and various other matters.

To the extent that most people from the United States know the Azores, it is because of the importance of the island chain as a waypoint in the path of tropical storms and hurricanes in the North Atlantic basin from the coast of Africa to the various other inhabited islands and mainland beyond. Yet the Azores have had a strikingly interesting and complex history that extends, at least as far as we are aware, to its discovery by early Portuguese explorers, who peopled the islands with Portuguese settler colonists and used the island as a testing ground for the techniques in imperialism and colonialism that would be further honed in more distant areas. Not only is the island a subtropical emerald isle, but like Ireland it is a place of near colonialism where the settlement and rule of the island was practice for larger empires to come. Strikingly, the early colonies of the Azores, Madeira, and Canary Islands remain under the rule of the Iberian countries that settled them some six hundred years or so ago in the first rush of colonial fervor those nations experienced.

The Azores themselves remain an autonomous part of the larger Republic of Portugal, as they have been since the re-establishment of democracy in Portugal in the 1970’s. It is unclear whether or not the Azores will ever be an independent country. But they are a beautiful place that, if obscure, is in a good location to attract well-wishers and tourists who can cast an eye on its natural beauty and engage in communication with its hardy and rugged population, provided they know enough Portuguese to do so, and find themselves in a place that is well worth exploring. My own sights of the island, brief as they have been, certainly whet my appetite for more.