Tourada a Corda Boa Hora, Sao Jorge

Terceira is the island where playing with bulls - the Tourada a Corda - was invented and is the island where it is mainly practised. However, it has also become popular on Sao Jorge and we decided to spend an afternoon watching the spectacle in the village of Faja de Sto Amaro situated  just before the Sao Jorge airport.

Caught the 1530 bus from Velas to Urzelina.

 As we were too early for the event, we decided to stay on the bus and walk the few kilometers back from Uzelina - luckily we had our waterproofs with us as part of the walk was in the rain. 

The photo below shows the airport runway which we walked past.

 

 The church of Nossa Senhora de Boa Hora which provided a grandstand view of the Tourada. 

The event was indeed part of the festa in honour of Nossa Senhora de Boa Hora

 The 4 bulls arrive in their crates on the back of a truck and are offloaded ready for the event

 The local band adds a festive note

 Please click on below arrow to play video clip - 

Note - unfortunately as the IPAD does not have Flash Player, this clip will not play on an IPAD

 Waiting for the firework rocket to signify the release of a bull

 The bull controllers handling the rope which is attached to the bull

 Threading the rope back into the crate so that the bull can be encouraged to reenter its crate

All in all a very similar event to what we have witnessed several times on Terceira

Faial Sea Week 7 to 14 August 2012

Horta celebrated its annual Sea Week festival in fine style between 7 and 14 August. The boulevard was festively lit at night and restuarant marquees and other stalls erected

 The Club Nautica invited all sailors to a traditional fish soup supper

 and bands played traditional songs from two different stages at either end of town

 one evening was celebrated with Fada.

Unfortunately, after midnight the traditional music was replaced by very loud pop group bands till the early hours of the morning - the supply of earplugs from the festivities in Praia da Vitoria from last year came in very useful

 The town dignitaries made speeches

 and local bands marched through the streets

 one evening we were treated to folklore dancing

 A sailing race was held for any cruisers that wished to take part.

 As with all the Azores Island, the old whaling heritage is not forgotten and the local fleet of whaling canoes had a race between Faial and Pico

 zooming in ...

 and in ...

 Later they took of their sails and had rowing races in the Harbour

 

 During the week we visited the Horta Whaling Museum which is basically the renovated site of the old factory where they processed the various parts of the Sperm Whales which they hunted. Below are the boilers for producing whale oil from blubber - at the time this was liquid gold

 Other equipment produced bone meal for fertiliser

 This is the arch at the end of the ramp through which the massive whales were winched

 the ramp

 Between the whale museum and the town is Pim's beach off which we have had several good swims

 The other side of the museum is the volcano Monte da Guia which has a good walk to the end of its peninsular

 views of the small Caldeira do Inferno bay to the south of the peak which is a nature reserve

Our friends Riens and Ineke from S/V Zeezwaluw were very industrious

 and contributed to the yachtee artwork on the quay with their magnificent painting

Met up again with singlehander Chuck from S/V Reflections who we had last met at anchor off La Gomera in the Canaries 18 months ago. Chuck introduced us to the novel cooking method of Sous Vide - the steak he cooked for us had been cooking very slowly vacuum packed in a water bath for about 3 days at a precisely controlled temperature of 55 degC - end result - delicious. On Googling Sous Vide - see Wikipedia link below,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sous-vide

we find that this is a technique used by many top chefs.

Flores - Festa do Emigrante 13 to 16 July 2012

Between 13 and 16 July Lajes on Flores was in party mood. We are told that the population of the island has shrunk from 10,000  some 20 years ago to around 3500 now. Every year, however, many of the families that emigrated , mainly to the USA and Canada, return for a few weeks in the summer to reestablish ties with family and friends who remained on the island. This annual visit is celebrated with a fiesta, the Festa do Emigrante.

The main street is blocked off from traffic , decorations installed and most evenings there were dancing processions

 to the accompanyment of the local band

 The event was very similar to what we enjoyed on Terceira in previous years but, of course much smaller due the the comparative size of Flores and its remoteness. A large ferry did however bring people from other islands and stayed in the harbour for a few days till the end of the Festa.

 Our enterprizing young friends Jabez and Anneleize and one of their friends,Toni, set up a pancake stall behind this wall

 and every evening

we enjoyed one of their delicious pancakes

 On the Sunday the band played, young and old, during lunch time outside a large warehouse in which free soup was served

 Friends we made during our stay here from the yachts Titom ( Bernard, (Pascal not in foto) and Christa) and Tsamaya (Bob & Janice), both of which have just crossed the Atlantic

 Enjoying the soup

 The tradition is to eat the soup with lots of bread soaking in it

The soup was provided by the Espirito Santo organisation which is very strong throughout the Azores. The soup is normally served during Corpus Christi  

Quite an logistical exercise to prepare so much soup

 and meat to put in it

 That evening there was folklore dancing

 Anneleize with pretty butterfly face.

All in all a pleasant few days