AZORES

They rose from the Mid-Atlantic Ridge — nine volcanic tips of mountains tall enough that only their crowns break the surface. The youngest, Pico, still wears its crater like a recent scar; the oldest have softened into crater lakes and rolling pastures the colour of an over-exposed photograph.

They call it the Floating Garden for a reason you understand the moment you leave the airport: hydrangeas lining every roadside, hedges of blue and violet running to the horizon, green that never quits because the rain never quite stops. The climate is spring, all year, with the volume turned up.

This is not a brochure. It is a slow walk through five days on these islands — the calderas, the whales, the tea rows, the cooking pits that use the volcano's own breath. The photography carries you. The words are the caption.