Dolphin and Whale Watching around Sao Miguel, Azores

One of the first things that attracted us to the Azores was the chance of seeing whales and dolphins. As the Azores are literally in the middle of the ocean, you can see these beautiful creatures at any time of the year! 

There are numerous companies on the island that offer dolphin/whale watching tours. We chose Picos de Aventura (and recommend that you do too), for two reasons:

1) They don't disturb the cetaceans
Other companies on the island go out on bigger boats (with bigger engines) which can have up to 60 other people on board! That's not nice for the whales - and incidentally, not nice for the people either: Do you really want to be with a massive group of people all pushing for a front row seat? Or would you rather be with just a handful of others? 

2) They help research projects and are concerned about the animals and the environment 
Picos de Aventuras are working with Monicet which is a research project that wants to build a long term database of cetacean sightings. They are clearly passionate and knowledgeable when it comes to the preservation and protection of the animals - and the environment in general. 

We knew Picos de Aventura were dolphin and whale friendly, next we wanted to know how likely we were to see whales and dolphins

Like I said, the Azores are in the middle of the ocean, so dolphin and whales are very common there. However, the ocean is still massive and the boats are tiny so how do they know where to look?

Picos de Aventura employ a clever technique - they have lookouts on the mountains who use military binoculars to spot the whales, then they radio/phone the boat and tell them which direction to go!

Despite the commonness of the cetaceans and the cleverness of the binocular plan, there is still a chance you won't see whales - they are wild after all. In this rare case, Picos de Aventura give you the option of coming back on another day free of charge, or having your money back. Which is really cool, a lot of other companies don't do this. 

Ultimately, as long as you're at the Azores for long enough, you will see dolphins/whales. By long enough I mean at least a week (but ideally a fortnight - or a whole month like we did ;) ). 

The Azores weather is very volatile and if you come here for just three or four days, yes even in the middle of June, you could get four days of rain and you won't see the whales.

All in all, Picos de Aventura manage to keep everyone happy - they ensure the tourists have the highest chance of seeing the whales, but they also make sure that the whales are kept safe, by keeping the correct distances and forbidding swimming with them.

The boats go out three times a day, and we opted for an afternoon one:

We sat right at the front of the boat, we were warned that it would be less bumpy at the back, but we wanted to 'Jack and Rose it' and pretend we were the kings of the world. It was indeed bumpier at the front, but not that much bumpier and the views were worth it: 

i.e. we didn't have to see the backs of people's heads

We hadn't been at sea for very long before we saw our first dolphins!!

It was so cool to see them in the wild, they came right up to the boat, so the engine was respectfully switched off. There were lots of dolphins and we even saw pups! It really was magical.

Next we saw a Portuguese man o' war, apparently named because they look like the old Portuguese ships. Not because they're actually Portuguese.  

Anyway, I was busy thinking that we'd been lucky enough to see dolphins and jellies and have a great boat ride. There was no way we were going to see whales too, but then we saw a whale blow.. we saw whale blow? We saw air exhale explosively from a blowhole???... Basically we saw water burst upwards in the distance and were able to shout 'thaar she blows!!!' 

Blow

The boat sped towards it and soon we spotted it! It was a sei whale!!

Hi Sei!

Sei whales are the fourth biggest whales in the world. And it really was big!!! It kept moving along steadily - surfacing and diving. I managed to take a lot of shots of it diving, and due to the water colour and the fin shape, it kind of looks like a dolphin!:

But this amazing photo from Felix will give you an idea of how big it really was: 

It was so exciting! After ten minutes or so of observing the whale, we turned back to shore. We were quite far from Ponta Delgada at this point, but luckily our guides kept things interesting by showing us the Islet of Vila Franca do Campo - where Red Bull do Cliff Diving!

We highly recommend Picos de Aventura - they are by far the best adventure company on Sao Miguel. This was a really exciting, wonderful day. We were in the Azores for one month, this and Furnas were our absolute favourite days.

Recommendations:

• Sit at the front of the boat if possible - it's lots of fun
• Make sure your camera is waterproof 
• If you have limited time on the island, whale/dolphin watch on your first day - that way if you don't see any, you still have time to come back another day!

We were invited on this boat trip as a guest of Picos de Aventura, but, as always, all opinions are our own. 

Canoeing and Mountain Biking Adventures around Lagoa das Furnas, Azores

If (when) you come to the Azores, Portugal, you must visit Lagoa das Furnas! It's one of the island's three massive volcanic lakes. It's extremely beautiful and the vegetation around the edge is like something out of Jurassic Park. 

s

Having done pretty relaxing activities at the other two lakes (walking/driving around Lagoa das Sete Cidades and relaxing in hot springs nearby Lagoa do Fogo), we wanted to do something a bit more adventurous at Lagoa das Furnas. 

Lagoa das Sete and Lagoa do Fogo

So we headed over with the best adventure company on the island - Picos de Aventura to enjoy an awesome fun-packed day of canoeing, mountain biking and eating local foods! 

It was a fantastic day and the perfect way to experience Furnas. Here's what we did: 

Mountain Biking around Lagoa das Furnas

At Picos de Aventura's headquarters in Ponta Delgada, we met our guide and the other people on the tour - there were just five of us in total (including us, not including the tour guide). This was a great number as we all got to know each other and didn't have to fight for the best photo spots (like you do with bigger tours). 

Our guide drove us over to Furnas in the minibus, the drive itself was very pretty and he told us some interesting facts. 

Once we were in Furnas, we got the bikes out and got going. Almost instantly, we knew that biking around these volcanoes is the way to go. 

The Azores are renowned for their ever-changing weather - one minute beautiful sunshine, the next torrential rain (hence the fabulous plants). 

Same day two hours apart ;)

But one type of weather you are guaranteed to have in the Azores 24/7 is humid weather. This makes it hard to walk around without getting sticky and tired. 

Mountain biking is the perfect cure for this. You still get to see things more intimately than you would in a car, and you're a lot more comfortable than when walking. 

Mountain biking around the lake was very cool.  Our guide was perfect - he gave us enough space to do things at our own pace, but was always there with funny jokes and facts when needed. 

We biked up to the lake and half way around it, where we got to see where our lunch was being made:

Our lunch was actually cooked in the earth next to the volcano. There are hot springs there which are heated by the volcanic steam. 

It's so hot you can cook meat, fish, veg - well, anything really! There are even sections of boiling water where they cook eggs. 

It was so fascinating to watch the men take the pots out of the ground. By this point we were all hungry and excited about the lunch we'd just seen being cooked, so it was a quick (downhill) cycle ride back to the town for lunch:

Lunch

We ate with our guide and the other members of the tour at a restaurant called Tonys. Tonys was absolutely packed and is one of the most popular restaurants in town.

We had Cozido - a traditional Portuguese/ Spanish stew. This was what we'd seen being cooked in the ground! Although I like my meat rare and Tanbay likes his burnt to a crisp, we still enjoyed the Cozido which, having been cooked in the ground for five hours, was well done and juicy. 

We were very happy to try something that a) we'd seen being cooked in the ground b) was traditional and c) was served to us in a popular restaurant. The restaurant also served the best chocolate cake ever, amazing coffee, and extremely fresh pineapple (grown on the island). 

Canoeing on Lagoa das Furnas 

After lunch we headed back to the lake to try out canoeing/kayaking. It was a great way to see the lake. 

We'd enjoyed admiring the lakes from the side, but actually being on the lake was even more exciting. Kayaking also complemented the mountain biking perfectly - a full body work out! But there was no pressure, our guide gave us an hour and a half to explore the lake at our own pace - which, after the massive lunch, was slow! 

Mountain biking and canoeing around Lagoa das Furnas with Picos de Aventura was so much fun! We spent a month in the Azores and this was definitely the highlight of our trip - we highly recommend them. 

Picos de Aventura truly are the best adventure company on the island. 

If you'd like to hear more about the Mystic Furnas trip with Picos de Aventura click here. They also offer lots of other exciting tours, which you can find out more about here. We went whale watching with them too (post to follow soon). 

Travelling Weasels experienced Lagoa das Furnas as a guest of Picos de Aventura however, the above opinions are our own. As always. 

How to Start House Sitting - and Live Rent Free WORLD WIDE!

How can I start House Sitting?

How can you start House Sitting - and live rent free world wide? 

First things first, if you've stumbled across this page because you want to 'live rent free world wide' and have no idea what House Sitting entails, please feel free to check out this post first: What is House Sitting.

Essentially though, House Sitting is like baby sitting but for houses and pets, not babies. 

Okay, so you know what House Sitting is, but why should you do it? Maybe, free accommodation world wide isn't enough for you, if so you should check out this post: 7 Reasons you Should House Sit


So at this point you should know what House Sitting is, and you should be excited to get started with it. But why listen to us?

It's no secret we LOVE House Sitting. It's taken us to eight countries: Spain, Germany, Italy, Australia, the UK, Finland, Portugal and the Netherlands and given us two years of free accommodation! 

Free accommodation that often comes with a swimming pool - not bad right? (Gold Coast House Sit).

We've House Sat villas with swimming pools, homes on deserted beaches, apartments right in the centre of some of the world's most famous cities and, our all time favourite, a vineyard in Italy:

The vineyard in Italy

Ultimately, with 20 House Sits under our belt, and most of those being House Sits to die for, we know what we're talking about. We know how to get started properly and how to lay a solid foundation to enable you to House Sit well for the next few years. 

But we started off just like you, worse probably, we made lots of silly mistakes when we first started and we're now in the position to understand what they were and prevent you from making those same mistakes!

Lesson one: learn how to make a dog smile ;) - (Portugal House Sit) 

So, without further ado, let's get started: 

How can I start House Sitting?

How can I find those great House Sits?

How can I live world-wide and rent free?

Step 1. How to find House Sits

A lot of people ask us these questions - where do we find the House Sits? The local library? The newspaper? Owl post? 

Owl?

Actually, House Sitting used to mainly be done through agencies and it was mostly done by retired people. 

The reason was two fold: retired people tended to have the time, and money, to go off galavanting and live in any country.

BUT with the introduction of the internet House Sitting has had a make-over: 

Firstly: the adverts are now mainly on websites specially designed for House Sitting (i.e. House Sitting websites). 

Secondly: with more and more people working online/becoming digital nomads, younger and younger people are able to 'retire' early. Or, more accurately they are able to work anywhere, anytime - as long as there's internet. (We work online too, but that's a whole other post that can be found here: How can I make money online.)

So, thanks to the internet, in the last few years House Sitting has become more accessible to a wider audience. Almost anyone can do it, like us - or you. 

Fancy your own private beach in Western Australia? 

All you need to do is sign-up to a House Sitting website, create a profile and apply to the available House Sits. 

Step 2. Which House Sitting website should I choose?

There are a lot of House Sitting Websites out there, these are the main ones:

• Trusted Housesitters
• House Carers
• Mind my house 
• Nomador
• Luxury Housesitting
• Housesit Match 

So which one should you choose? 

For newbies it can be quite confusing, some of these websites are more expensive than others, but generally the more expensive they are, the more House Sitting assignments are available.

Bonus of House Sitting: looking after dogs that smell flowers 

Of course, if money were no object we'd recommend signing up to all of them! But for budget travellers, money often is an object.

Now we picked Trusted Housesitters, let me reveal to you:

• Why we signed up with them
• Why we are very pleased we did (and why we renewed our membership two years in a row). 

Why we signed up with them:

• It's the biggest House Sitting website out there, and bigger means better in the form of more House Sitting opportunities than anywhere else.
• It tells you once a House Sitter has been found, so you don't waste time applying to ones that are already sorted (not true for some other House Sitting websites).
• There's great choice in the length of the sit - just for the weekend or for a whole year, no matter how long you want to do it there's always one out there
• Similarly for choice of countries. On Trusted Housesitters the countries that pop up the most are the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada and Spain. But most other countries pop up too.
• They send you an email every time there is a new sit, so you can get straight in there and apply. 
• It's for everyone: retired people, families and young people too! And everyone in between 

But the main reason we signed up to Trusted House Sitters is that you can browse the sits before you sign-up, and we found a sit that looked amazing, which ultimately made us sign up!

We want to inspire other people the way we were inspired, so every day we update this page House Sitting Opportunities which shows you the best sits out there to date. Take a look and see if anything takes your fancy! 

Like this hound - how could you resist?

Alternately, browse Trusted Housesitters yourself and see if there's anything you'd like! It's free to window shop :) 

Now, enough about why we chose them - here's why we are super pleased we picked them, and why we renewed our membership two years in a row:

• All of our Australian House Sits came through them - they enabled us to travel all over Australia (Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia, New South Wales and Canberra):

• In other words, that was nine months of free accommodation in Australia. 
• Next, all of our European House Sits came through them - the Netherlands, Spain, Finland, the UK, Portugal, Germany and Italy:

In other words, another 15 months worth of free accommodation.  

• We now have the next six months of accommodation sorted, again through this site. 

We basically renewed our membership with them because of the success we'd had with them: two whole years of free accommodation in homes which almost always came with a 'bonus' - a pool, a vineyard, a sauna, a whirlpool etc. 

Quick side step - how much does it cost to sign up to Trusted House Sitters?

12 months = just £5.99 per month! (Note, you do have to pay for 12 months all at once, i.e. £71.88). 

What!? £71.88 all at once? Wait a minute, hear us out: If you are serious about travelling, accommodation will be one of your biggest (if not the biggest) expenditure of your trip. If you stay in hostels, hotels or even AirBnB, you know £71.88 isn't going to get you very far. But with House Sitting it gets you a years worth of accommodation! It's only £5.99 a month which is just £0.20 a day (or £0.10 if you're a couple... or £0.05 if you are a family of four.. okay I'll stop now). 

PLUS! If you sign up to our super cool mailing list, we will give you a 10% discount for a year's membership with Trusted House Sitters! (Subscribe here.) 

Side effect to House Sitting: happiness

There is also the option of just paying for three months to start off with (£14.99 per month, £44.97 in total), but we can't give you a discount for that yet, sorry! 

But enough side stepping, let's get back to the steps:

Step 3. Getting your first sits

We're not going to lie to you, when we first started House Sitting we found it hard to get our first sit - just because you are competing against other House Sitters and those without references have less of a leg to stand on. 

BUT the good news is, once we did a few special things we got our first sit, and then after that it was easier and easier to get picked for House Sits. 

After a year of House Sitting and 8 good references we were in the position of getting pretty much every sit we applied to.

Now, after two years of House Sitting we are getting numerous emails from Home Owners asking us to House Sit, and we're booked up for the next six months. 

House Sitting does of course involve some sitting down 

Okay, so my point is it gets easier, but we want to make it easy for you to get your first House Sit  - remember we mentioned the special things we needed to do at the beginning? At the time they weren't very obvious, and talking to newbie House Sitters now it turns out it's not so obvious to them either. 

SO, to make things easier for everyone we've written a sweet little ebook which reveals all our tips and tricks and guarantees you get your first House Sit. 

It's entitled 'House Sitting in Australia - A Guide For First Time House Sitters', but the tips and tricks can be applied to any country you're looking to House Sit in first -i.e. it's not just for Australian House Sits :) you can read more about the ebook here. 

Simba and Genie - best names ever?

Basically, it has everything you need to know in order to secure your first sits, including:

• What the application process is like
• How newbie House Sitters can get references - and why it's essential that they do
• How and why to get a police check
• How to write the perfect application letter - everything that must and must not be included
• Why you should Skype with Home Owners before agreeing to do a sit - and what to talk about 
• How you can work whilst House Sitting (and why you don't necessarily have to)
• How to groom a dog
• What to do if a dog gets sick and/or misses its owner. 

Okay, so you've heard our recommendations on who to sign up to, and how to get your first sit. Anything else? 

Note: horses look funny when they eat apples

How to have a perfect first House Sit
For this, we recommend practise. Practise on your parent's house, or your friends' house or your neighbours'. Any house you can get your hands on really.

Essentially though House Sitting isn't really hard, but we find it helps to follow this rule (that we made up):

Be a mixture of perfect guest and perfect tenant.

What we mean by this: perfect guests clean up after themselves and are considerate of the owner. But guests don't clean up dog poop and aren't responsible if the fuse goes off - that's where being the perfect tenant comes in. 

Disadvantage of House Sitting: dogs that are better looking than you

It's not all dog poop and cleaning though. We've found that when we act like this perfect guest/tenant hybrid we are treated like a perfect guest/tenant hybrid - on their return, home owners often treat us to day trips, meals out, GoPros... Okay who gets a GoPro as a guest or a tenant? Maybe a guest of Richie Rich... but I digress: 

Living here rent free? Amazing

In conclusion: 
1. Sign up to Trusted House Sitters 
2. If you'd like a 10% discount for their annual plan, subscribe here.
3. For insider tips on how to successfully get your first House Sits, read this ebook.
4. Be a tenant/guest hybrid 


And hopefully you'll be House Sitting places like this soon:

House Sitting in Spain 

So what do you think? Would you like to be a House Sitter? 

House Sitting has changed our lives completely, if you have any questions contact us on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram or via email. Alternately leave a comment below or catch us on Snapchat! (Travelweasels) 

P.S. If you would like a 10% discount for trustedhousesitters.com's annual membership subscribe to our free mailing list now!

(Subscribe here.)