From Terceira to the Caribbean and Back Again

My name is Ivo Da Silva, and I often tell guests, “I was fortunate to be born here because of an unfortunate event.”

My father came to Terceira after the 1980 earthquake to work on the reconstruction of the island. My mother came with him, and that is how I eventually came to be born in Angra do Heroísmo.

Growing up, Sundays often meant getting in the car with my parents and going somewhere around the island. We would stop at beautiful places, some of them so little known that even friends of mine had no idea they existed. I think that is where my connection with nature, the sea and the island really started.

Terceira was always home, but I think I learned to really notice it because of the way I grew up.

Long before tourism was ever part of the picture, I already enjoyed finding places, stopping somewhere beautiful and just taking it in. I loved the sea, the green landscapes, the small roads and the places that felt a little hidden.

I did not know it at the time, but that curiosity about the island would end up following me for the rest of my life.

In 2005, I left Terceira to study Marketing, Public Relations and Advertising at EPCI in Lisbon.

After finishing my studies, I came back to the island and had a few different jobs. At that point I still had no clear plan to build a career in tourism, and definitely no idea that I would one day create TerceiraTours.

Then, in 2010, I found an advert online that changed everything.

I went to the Dominican Republic to work in public relations for Dressel Divers in Punta Cana. During that first year I came back to Terceira for a while, but by the end of 2011 I had returned to the Dominican Republic and this time I stayed.

What started as a job in public relations quickly became much more than that. I started taking my diving courses, moved into sales, became an instructor and kept growing inside the company.

In December 2012, I was transferred to Bayahibe. Over the years I became a Dive Boss and PADI IDC Staff Instructor, taking on more responsibility in the operation and helping train other professionals.

I stayed in the Dominican Republic until June 2019.

Dressel was a big company and the standards were very high. Not just in the diving courses, but in everything.

The way the staff presented themselves, the uniforms, the centres, the boats, the equipment, everything had to be clean and organised. There were clear standards for how things should be done, and that stayed with me.

What I also really liked was that there was room to grow. If you worked hard and proved yourself, you could take on more responsibility, earn more, get extra days off and keep moving forward inside the company.

I started in public relations and ended up becoming a Dive Boss and PADI IDC Staff Instructor. Looking back, I think one of the things I value most from those years is the trust the company placed in me and the opportunities they gave me to keep growing.

I learned a lot there about tourism, customer service, organisation and standards. Years later, when I came back to Terceira, I wanted to bring some of that know-how with me.

I came back to Terceira every year on holiday, and every time I left, I felt like I was leaving a little piece of myself behind.

In 2018, there was a problem with my work visa because my name had been entered incorrectly. I had to stay in Terceira for about two months while everything was sorted out, and when it was finally time to leave again, it was harder than usual.

By 2019, things were also changing in my family. My brother had an opportunity to work outside the island, my sister was already living in São Miguel and my father was going to spend several months away for work. That meant my mother would be here mostly on her own.

Around the same time, I had opportunities to go elsewhere, including the Maldives and Timor. But during a video call with my mother on Mother’s Day, I told her I had decided to come home.

It just felt like the right moment.

When I came back to Terceira in 2019, I did not have a plan to start my own company.

What I did have was a huge desire to bring some of what I had learned abroad back with me. I had spent years working in a company where standards were taken very seriously, and where people had real opportunities to grow inside the organisation.

I wanted to keep growing here too. I wanted to bring that know-how with me and apply it to tourism in Terceira.

I tried. It did not really work out the way I had hoped.

The reality here was different, the mentality was different, and after a while I realised I was not going to find the same kind of path I had had in the Dominican Republic.

In 2021, I decided not to renew my contract. At that point, TerceiraTours still did not exist, but I knew I wanted to create something of my own and do things differently.

The idea for TerceiraTours only really started in November 2021, after I had left the company I was working with.

At the end of that year, I joined StartUp Angra and started shaping the idea with Sebastião Medeiros, who was the director at the time.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to create something different. During those months of preparation, I built the website myself, started sending pricelists to agencies and went to BTL in Lisbon to make contacts.

The name TerceiraTours helped too. Having a simple domain like terceiratours.com made it easier for people to find us online from the start.

I had already bought a second-hand van, so by the time the company was officially registered in March 2022, it was no longer just an idea.

Our first private booking was a mother and daughter who booked three days with me. It was a brilliant way to start, because it gave me the chance to do exactly the kind of experience I had been imagining.

From the beginning, I knew I did not want TerceiraTours to be just another company doing the same island tour in the same way.

Because of the way tourism works here, doing something really different is not always easy. Shared tours tend to work best when they follow a more standard route, because that is what most people booking that kind of tour are looking for.

For me, private tours gave me the freedom to do something else.

I wanted local people to be at the centre of the experience. I wanted visitors to taste our food, listen to our music, meet the people behind small local businesses and understand a little bit of what it actually feels like to live on Terceira.

When I was living in the Dominican Republic, guests often ended up learning about my life there as an emigrant, not just about the places we were visiting. I wanted to bring that same feeling back home.

That is where the idea of Slow Tours really came from. Not rushing from stop to stop, but spending more time with people, places and stories, and making sure part of what visitors spend also stays with local families and businesses.

Since then, TerceiraTours has grown in ways I am very proud of, even if I never wanted it to become a big company.

One of the things that means the most to me is seeing ideas that started with us helping other local businesses too. The Coffee & Fruit Farm experience is a good example. We started bringing visitors there as part of our tours, and today more companies and even independent travellers visit the plantation.

Of course they are also our competitors in some ways, but that does not bother me. If more people are discovering a local family, spending money there and learning about what they do, that is a good thing for Terceira.

The company itself also grew a little. I added another vehicle, our SUV, and today I work with a small group of freelancers when I need extra help.

But for me, growth has never been about becoming bigger just for the sake of it.

Some of the moments I remember most have very little to do with viewpoints or famous places.

We have had families come to Terceira looking for relatives and end up meeting people they did not even know existed. We have had guests come back more than once, bring their families, and in some cases even decide to buy a house on the island.

Those are the moments that stay with me.

A tour can start as a few hours around Terceira and somehow become part of someone’s family story, or the beginning of a connection with the island that lasts for years.

That is probably one of the nicest parts of what I do.

I do not want TerceiraTours to become a big company.

If we grow a little more, I can imagine having one more person working in the field and maybe someone helping in the office. But that is probably as far as I would want to take it.

I like keeping things small and personal. When I need extra guides, I work with a very small group of freelancers, usually two or three people, and that is intentional.

For me, knowing the island is not enough. The people who work with us have to be genuine, enjoy being with guests and understand the kind of experience we are trying to create. I have been very lucky with the people I work with.

I am always open to creating new experiences and finding new ways to show Terceira, but growing the number of vehicles, guides or tours just for the sake of becoming bigger has never been the goal.

Some guests have travelled to dozens of countries and later tell me that I was the best guide they ever had, or that their time with us was the best tour they have ever done.

Of course that means a lot to me. But what matters even more is that they remember Terceira.

I want them to remember the alcatra. I want them to remember the people at the coffee plantation, the smell of the sea, the smell of the forest and the way people here welcomed them.

If, years later, they still remember how the island made them feel, then I think we did our job well.