San Miguel
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37:44.3N 25:39.8W 8th July to 16th July 2011 We have just spent a lovely week in San Miguel. It may
be slightly out of our way but it was worth the detour. San Miguel is the
biggest island in the Azores and Ponta Delgada the capital is the biggest city
we have been to since Las Palmas. There is a brand new marina which is
half empty so we had our pick of the berths. We arrived on Friday just in time for the festival of Divino
Espirito Santo which went on for 3 days. This entailed lots of live music,
parades and, as Espirito Santo is about giving, lots of free food and drink. The live music was variable but included some really good
bands
On Saturday lunchtime we joined in the festivities along
with about 5,000 other people. Sitting at long trestle tables all around the
main square we had free soup, rice pudding and wine all served by the local
scouts. It was just like a giant street party!
On Saturday afternoon there was a parade of floats from each
village. Most of the floats were old squeaky ox carts pulled by handsome bulls
with lots of flowers. . There were several groups singing and dancing. Mary’s
favourite (below), were a group of blokes in purple shirts singing, dancing and
‘clapping’ castanets. It was the Azorean equivalent of Morris
dancing and looked equally as silly!
But our favourite float was from the region which brews Sagres,
the local beer. Their float (below) was manned with 8 blokes
handing out free chilled beer! The beer went down very well with
the endless supply of sweet bread which many other regions where handing out!
That evening whilst watching the bands we noticed everyone queuing
to go into the town hall. Being British we thought we would join the
queue to see what it was all about. After half an hour of queuing with
excited anticipation we went into a room to view an ‘intriguing’
display of crowns! The next day people from each region dressed up in
posh frocks and paraded the crowns through the streets. It was no
more exciting than the static display in the town hall so we saved ourselves
for the bands that night!
On Tuesday and Wednesday we hired a car to drive around the
island. San Miguel has some of the best scenery with fantastic lakes and
waterfalls and hydrangeas lining all the roads and paths.
There are also lots of thermal pools and hot springs, some
of which you can swim in. We ‘swam’ in one at Furnas (below
right). The water was the temperature of a very hot bath. As this
was the first hot bath we’ve had in 10 months (Stella isn’t quite
big enough to be equipped with a bath so we have to make do with a shower) it
was especially relaxing!
The Azoreans are also mad on ‘miradors’ (scenic view
points along the road) some of which included beautiful picnic areas with brick
BBQs and carefully manicured gardens in the middle of nowhere. Maybe
there was a competition for the best mirador?
We have met up with a few other OCC and ARC boats here and there
have been several nights of evening drinks on each other’s boats. So
long as we don’t drink too much we plan to leave tomorrow. The wind
is not great and we will have to beat into northerlies to start with to hopefully
get some better wind for the rest of the trip. |
