People happened to be celebrating a Festival of the Holy Ghost outside imperios (small colourful chapels unique to Terceira) around the island. When we reached Agualva, we joined in and were given loaves of bread, slices of sweet bread, and strong wine. As we drove through Biscoitos, we were handed more loaves of bread through our car window. |
Having visited "The Green Island" and "The Yellow Island", we flew to "The Bull Island". Terceira is known for its love of "bullfights", so I had obtained information in advance that allowed us to immediately set out to witness one of the famed events once we'd checked into our hotel. The beer-fueled event seemed like a great outlet for faux machismo, and was interesting to witness. We stayed for two of the four bulls' runs. We passed monuments to bulls each time we entered or left the city, and found many bullfight related toys in the shops. Terceira is Portuguese for ‘third’ - as in ‘the third largest island’ and ‘the third island to be populated’ during the Portuguese Age of Discovery. It was also the third (and final) Azorean island we'd explore. Our first stop with the rental car was the Serra do Cume viewpoint. We checked out the natural pools at Biscoitos, but it wasn't warm enough to tempt us into the water. We knew that the Rocha do Chambre hike was a n 8.8 km loop and were expecting to complete it in about 2.5 hours. We did not anticipate that the trail would be so wet, muddy, slippery, and therefore difficult. It took us 3 hours and 10 minutes to get back to our car. The Algar do Carvão is the only volcano in the world in which visitors can explore a volcanic chimney and secondary magma chambers. Furnas do Enxofro is a short circuit around "fumaroles" (vents for volcanic gases and vapors). We walked 16 kilometres (and drove another 80) while exploring Terceira on June 5th.
1 Comment
Susan
6/14/2022 06:29:21 am
This looks so cool
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