RS's travels: Day 3, Lagoa do Fogo

Today we decided to try and get above the fog and explore the volcano in the middle of the island. When we arrived through the dense fog, windy roads, extreme gale force winds, all we were able to see was more fog. Since we had driven all the way up there, we decided to at least try to hike down to the crater lake. No one in their right mind would have done this hike, but we did! It was slippery, steep, and straight down along a very wet and muggy pathway. It took us about half an hour to get down and though we were wearing our rain coats with our hoods as tight as possible, we were both soaked! At the bottom we could see a few feet out into the water and the sheer cliffs that we had just climbed down. It was truly magnificent and would have been much more amazing had we been able to see more than a few feet! It was still worth it though!
After the climb, we continued down the other side of the volcano and stopped along the way at another hot springs I had found that were even more natural and fun. There were two natural areas, one was 20 degrees celsius which was cold and the other was 35C which was nice and warm and shallow! After forgetting to take a towel from the hotel today, we dried each other off using our hands and standing over the steam venting holes from the ground!
Our next stop was the town of Ribiera Grande, which we discovered had a flower festival that had just ended. We got lucky as the church tower in the center of the town that is usually only open Monday, Wednesday and Fridays was open and we could walk to the top! It was very windy and nice from up there and neat to see some of the flowers on the ground that had been compiled for the festival. On the recommendation of the guide from the tower and from my research we went to a restaurant on the water called Alabote. It was by far the best meal we've had! And we had delicious chocolate mousse! I would definitely recommend it. Also the view is hard to beat!
After we finished our late lunch, we walked outside and it was torrentially raining and super windy! We had planned to walk along the black volcanic sand beach, but it was too stormy. So back to the hotel we ventured. We weren't hungry for dinner but knew that we wanted to get some gelato and go to a grocery store to buy some gifts before we left. We had tried white port that neither of us even knew existed the night before and it was delicious so we wanted to bring some home. Pj had researched and found a good gelato place nearby so we hopped in the car. We had crepes with two flavors of chocolate ice cream: one with cheese (seriously chocolate and cheese!) and one with chocolate and local strawberries. Both were delicious! The super market we went to looked like a Walmart and we were both skeptical but it was just a similar sign... we picked up some cheese and chocolate and looked at all the cheap wine and wished we could bring back a whole case!