Yesterday we went for a walk up to the top of Mont Brasil, a large hill overlooking the town of Angra do Heroismo.  Again, the wild flowers were amazing.  There were hundreds of large clumps of white lillies, with a hint of pink.

 

 

 

There was also a great view of the town.

 

 

Angra do Heroismo suffered an earthquake in 1980 which reached 7.4 on the richter scale, for 30 seconds.  There was widespread destruction and some buildings are still not repaired.  However, most have been very sympathetically rebuilt and the city is now a UNESCO Historic World Heritage Site.  The marina can just be seen in the foreground above.

 

The marina here is nice, with good facilities, however for the last three nights we have been blighted by late night karaoke.  "My Way" sung in Portugese at 2am is difficult to enjoy...

 

 

 

Today we went on a tour of the island with our friends from Wild Alliance, Blase and Temula B.  There were 18 of us so we had to hire two mini buses.

 

First we stopped at a cheese factory and bought a lot of the delicious local cheese.  Then we visited some rock pools where some of the more intrepid of us swam.  It was bracingly cold.  We drove up to the highest peak, Santa Barbara, but the cloud was too low so there was nothing to see.  Then we had lunch in a great local restaurant. 

 

 

We stopped off at a bullring on the way back, and ended up at a local bull run in the evening.  We found a spot high up, safely away from the street, to watch the action.  We were still pretty close:

 

 

 

The bulls are not injured in this type of bull running.  It is a tradition that goes back to 1581, to a time when the locals used their wild cattle to chase Spanish invaders off their island.