Festival

Location: s/v Liberty, port of Angra Do Heroismo, island of Terciera, Azores
Position: 38 32.039 N 028 37.525 W

We really like the Azores - at least what we've seen of them so far. They're not widely known to Americans (yet) as a "destination", but they're really high on our list of places to revisit!

We left Horta at 7 am yesterday and sailed and motored just over 60 miles to Terciera in light winds. We saw several more pods of dolphin and Julie spotted a small whale - we're not sure what kind it was yet, but we're going to do some more research. We anchored at the harbor in Angra Do Heroismo (Creek of Heroes), spent the night, and moved into the marina on Wednesday.

Angra has been designated by Unesco as a World Heritage City - here's a link if you'd like to learn more about this program: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Heritage_Site. It's a beautiful city with cobblestone streets, white and black stone sidewalks, and wonderful architecture. It was of great importance during the opening to the new world, and arguably the largest fortification ever built by Spain still stands from the 16th and 17th centuries. More on Angra: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angra_do_Hero%C3%ADsmo

It's been festival time here for the past week. The Sanjoaninas (celebrations in honor of St. John) start on the Friday closest to 24 June and run for 10 days through the second Sunday. It's full of historical and religious events, running the bulls, folk music, and lots of other events.

Friends we met in Flores were already here and stopped by in their dinghy Tuesday evening after we arrived to give us some pointers, tell us what they'd found and seen so far, and to talk us into going into town with them at 9:30 pm to see the parade. We were pretty tired from the trip over, but decided to suck it up and go. We are really glad we did.

Since none of us know Portugese, even though we had a copy of the schedule and a Portugese-English dictionary, we still didn't really know what to expect. It turned out that the parade consisted of several groups of folk singers and musicians in traditional garb all arranged in a similar order. First, a flower girl or two and a couple of boys with wooden thingys - we don't know what the significance of them are yet. Then came the peasants, the farmers, the rich people - landowners, merchants, etc., and most of them had a woman in black that looked a bit like Darth Vader - we discovered later the she was 'a woman in early settler costume'. The musicians brought up the rear of each group.

They all sang traditional songs - men one line, women another line, then all together. Many of the spectators sang along, too, the men and women singing their parts. They have wonderful voices, sang lovely harmonies, and gave us a wonderful welcome to this island. Apparently all the songs are the same but each village has their own troupe and the dances are all different, some dramatically so.

The parade was followed by individual performances by each group on one of several stages set up around town. They did some complex country dancing, much like contra dancing, to music provided by the group's musicians and singers. What a great evening's entertainment, we stumbled into bed around 2am.

Mark & Julies/v Rachel