Azores – Terceira & Graciosa
We spent more time on Terceira than any of the other
islands in the Azores. This island is the second largest with two major towns and the second
largest population in the Azores.
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| Starlet at anchor in Angra do Heroismo |
Angra do Heroismo – August 1 to 3, 2012
After an easy 52 nm run from Sao Jorge, we anchored in the
harbor off the beach at Angra do Heroismo. This quickly became our favorite
town in the Azores with busy cafés & shops and stunning views overlooking
the harbor. Angra means cove in Portuguese; the town is built in the valley
above the natural harbor created by the “tuft cone” of Monte Brasil projecting
out from the main island.
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| The beach in Angra |
With backpacks and good walking shoes we took off to explore
the city. Lunch out at a cafe, lots of nice
shops, everyone busy with the days business. We found upscale homes with
perfect gardens, churches and museums.
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| Looking up at Angra from the anchorage |
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| Young love |
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We stumbled on a huge farmers
market with good prices and high quality fruit and vegetables. Next door there was a very clean meat market
- we stocked up for the first time since leaving the States. The fish market had all kinds of fish including whole octopus and moray eels.
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| Farmers market |
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| Fish market |
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| Gardens |
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| C5 at open house |
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| Time to be scared! |
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| Well behaved oxen |
Our visit to Praia was during a major festival. A huge tent
in the marina houses temporary restaurants from all over Portugal and the
Azores. The park close to the marina is the music center. The entertainment
starts at midnight and the DJ starts at 2:00 AM - way past our bed time!
A festival parade featured locals dressed in traditional
clothing from several eras. They brought
along ox carts, cows, a hog and two donkeys. One group staged a picnic and
dancing - both Rhett and Mark were invited to dance in the streets.
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| Time to dance! |
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| Traditional clothing |
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Angra do Heroismo – August 7 to 10, 2012
We ran back to Angra to give Rhett a chance to see this
city. Rhett is traveling before starting at the University of Florida this
fall. He spent a week in Portugal before joining Starlet. In Angra on a hike to
Monte Brasil, we saw the Castle of Sao Filipe. Built by the Spanish to protect
ships returning from the New World, it includes 4 km of walls and gun
placements ringing the bluffs.
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| Looking up at the Castile |
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| Fortifications around Monte Brasil |
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| Don't mind us... |
Rental cars were in high demand on Terceira. We ended up with a 4 door pickup truck with room for 5, so we were able to invite Bob and Janice from Tsamaya to
join us for an island tour. We ran up the south and west coasts, past beach
hotels and villages. In search of a cheese factory, we happened across an
Azorean family transplanted to California that was back in Terceira for a
visit. They dropped everything to escort us to our destination.
Later we made our way up the central peak to check out
geological features of the island. Gruta do Algar do Carvao has a vertical lava
tube leading down 125 m to two large rooms.
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| Looking up at the entrance/exit? |
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| Gruta |
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Furnas do Enxofre is an area of
fumaroles venting volcanic gasses. The Gruta do Natal is another cave system
with hundreds of meters of passages winding through various structures created
by lava flow.
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| Venting at Furnas |
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| Wandering through Gruta do Natal |
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It opens up into a 130 m diameter room
with an 80 m high dome ceiling - the most impressive cave we visited in the Azores.
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| Big room |
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| Bubbling mud |
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The same taxi picked us up and drove us down to the
main
town, Santa Cruz. A large town square was being prepped for the
procession at the end of their festival. This involved creating a
walkway of multicolored wood chips
and petals.
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| Creating the design |
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| Almost ready |
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Terceira – August 13 to 20, 2012
We made the 52 nm run back to Praia da Vitoria on Terceira
in time for a final dinner out with Rhett. After he flew out on the 14th
we ran Starlet back to Angra, the place Jennifer wanted to celebrate her
birthday. Shopping, a mani/pedi – this town met the requirements! Before
heading out for a birthday dinner, we had an impromptu gathering on Starlet
with Bob and Janice from Tsamaya plus new friends Jim and Carole from Nepenthe.
Those two are easing their way north through the Atlantic after spending 13
years going west from the US through the Pacific, Indian Ocean and Africa.
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| At anchor in Praia and ready for Gordon |
The buzz around the docks was that TS Gordon was aiming for
the Azores and predicted to become a hurricane. We had planned to leave on
August 18th for Sao Miguel, 120 nm to the SE, but that would put us
closer to the predicted path. Not wanting to face weather from the storm in
Angra, we ran Starlet back to the protected anchorage inside the harbor at
Praia.
We dropped the hook in 25 feet of water and 300+ feet from
any other boat. Mark dove on the bottom and found the Rocna anchor nicely
buried in firm sand. We had a day and a half for the storm to approach – so we
went exploring!
Having missed the north side of Terceira on our driving
tour, we took the bus to Biscoitos. It
was just under an hour away with stops through the villages along the way. In
Biscoitos we walked to the harbor and found a crowd of beach lovers on the
rocks and concrete platforms.
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| Swimming hole |
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| Concrete beach |
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Not a
grain of sand anywhere. The seas were
very rough but rings of boulders break the waves and form channels for swimmers. After lunch by the swimming rocks, we visited the local wine museum.
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| Wine museum |
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| Museum grounds |
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View Starlet in the Azores in a larger map
You did a great job with the blog!! Like the idea that you could add photo albums - didn't know you could do this - may have to check this site out more to move to as like the look of it better than ours, just not sure if I want to deal with the move to a new site
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