To The Azores - Part 3 - Terceira Thoughts

Transit to Sao Miguel

On transit days you don’t do any hiking. You need to have your suitcases packed and outside your hotel room door and ready for pickup before you go down to breakfast. After that you have a little time before you need to meet to board the bus. You won’t have a chance to change clothes or shower or anything like that before you board the plane to the next destination, so it doesn’t really make sense to go out on a big potentially sweaty (or rainy) hike. Today we are doing mostly bus touring.

We go up the coast and see some more local villages. We hike along the shore and see another swimming location. Our guide, Diogo, points out a bunch of plastic bottles that the surf has collected on the rocks 40 or so feet below us. He says that those are not bottles but dead Portuguese Man of War that have washed up on the shore. Now that we know what we are looking at, we see them everywhere. Hundreds of the little suckers. I had always thought that a Portuguese Man Of War was a big thing. Like about the size of a Cowboy hat floating on the surface. They are more the size of a Pint mug. Just cute little balloons floating on the water. Balloons that will KILL YOU. Okay, the usually just hurt a lot. You sort of have to swim into a herd of them or be allergic to have them kill you. Still, they hurt.  The Portuguese call these things Caravela, which was the name of their navy ships back in the day. Thus the name really means the warship (the Man of War) of the Portugal.

Doesn't that look like a sailing ship?

Our next stop is the islands Golf Course. The club house is a huge modern building that is highly sought after by the locals as a place to book for a wedding. It was very nice and fancy. We had lunch there and then watched the weather. The Fog was very dense today and the wind was howling. If you were going to hit a golf ball in this I am sure that it would travel a long ways, if you hit it down wind, but you would never see it or find it again. 

The golf course was founded by American servicemen who were assigned to the airfield on the island during and post WWII. They needed something to do so they went about organizing and having a golf course built. Americans are pretty funny. Here you are on this wonderful island and you have to go and have your own housing and built and so you must also need a golf course. It does seem like just about every Navy Base my father was ever at had its own golf course. I wonder if golf is still popular with Navy Officers these days of if they have moved on to some other sport. 

The base is at the town of Praia Which means ‘beach’ in Portuguese. So we have 2 big towns on the island of Terceira. “Anchorage” and “Beach”. On an island that is named “Third”. I am guessing that things didn’t get named so much in those days as they just developed out of common usage. "Oh, did you see the boats over at the Anchorage last week? No? Did they move to town at the beach?"

The towns actually have longer names, like Angra Hermosia, which means something like Heroic Anchorage, but those name endings were only tacked on a couple of hundred years ago and the locals haven't gotten used to them yet.

The US Military on Terceira - 

Our guide told us that Portugal was ‘sort of’ neutral during WWII. In actuality, the US was using Terceira as a base of operations to launch sub hunting patrols to cover their convoys bringing critical aid to the Allies. The airfield built there (and still used for both Military and commercial flights) was important during the actual war and the cold war that followed. With the US planes came all of the support that the US military brings with it to any offshore base. This means housing for personnel, maintenance support, commissary support, religious support, bowling alley support, housing for families, medical support, schools for families, housing for teachers. Oh, just everything. And everything needs to be paid for and that brings in a lot of money (and jobs) into the local economy. There was a large (modern when built) housing area for local personnel. Our guide said it was seldom full because Americans preferred to rent local places in town (probably more cost effective and fun). And then they ‘encourage’ the building of the golf course. Officers really love their golf courses.  Most of all that is done now, the housing area is empty and no one knows what to do with it. The US Coast Guard and Portugal still share all of the sea rescue work for the Atlantic, however. I saw a C130 fly past when we were out driving toward the golf course for lunch. That is the Coast Guards main transport and search platform these days. When I was 13, I flew in an Air Force C130 from Guam to Tokyo with a troop of boy scouts going to the 13th World Jamboree in Japan at the foot of Mount Fuji. How is that for random segue?

Chapel of the Holy Spirit -

Our guides talked often about Chapels of the Holy Spirit. I think there was some confusion about what exactly is going on here. Part of the problem is that Americans may not understand how important the Catholic church is on the islands (95% of the population claim to be catholic) and so we may not appreciate the subtle little differences going on. When I do some research on the web many places (including wikipedia) call it "The Cult of the Holy Spirit". From listening to our guide, however, I felt that it is more of a really religious social club. Every little town has a Church. This is where the priests do their thing. Every little town also has at least one Chapel of the Holy Spirit. On Terceira, these are brightly decorated little buildings with a crown over the front door (symbolizing the Holy Spirit). These buildings are used mainly for storage. They hold the holy relics that a given chapel may posses (no idea what they might be) and they hold the common possessions of that branch of the Holy Spirit Club. These common possessions are the things that a small community might need to have a nice party: tables, chairs, big cooking and servicing implements, cutlery for 100. Things like that. They are brought out for the big Holy Spirit celebrations that happen for a couple of months after Easter. They are also available for use by any club member during the rest of the years for birthday parties or weddings or whatever.

The local clubs members pay dues and help support the big party every year and also give charity food and such to local people in need. To me, this sounds like the shriners only you don't get a funny hat. Also during special times, different families can bring the chapel relics to their homes and pray to them for special compensation from the Holy Spirit. When you have the relics at your home, you fly a special red flag out in front of your house so that people know you are praying (and presumably can send their prayers your way to help you out).

According to our guide, this club of the Holy Spirit is not exactly a part of the Church but is also not in competition with the church and priests and bishops and such are often the head of the Holy Spirit Club.

Another celebration by the Holy Spirit Clubs is a walk they do around the island. We were told about this on Sau Miguel. Groups of men from each town don special clothing and set out on a walk around the island stopping each night in a different village where they are hosted. This sounds like a great moving mixer to me. The young men get to go around to different towns and talk to people, the young women in the towns get to meet new young men each evening. I am sure some couples meet through this great social ritual.

The Crown over the door

This was on Mt Brazil.
May not be a chapel

From Sau Miguel. not as colorful

The mosaic on the left is showing the celebration.
Including the giving of the special bread


I have requested more Chapel Pictures from my tour group friends. We will see what we get :)

Praia - Beach -

See the sand?

We stopped for a few minutes to walk on the beach and get a pretty overlook. Not much to say here other than this the port where the tourist boats come in. Angra may be the better historic port but this is the place where large vessels have a place to tie up. We did walk on the beach, it was the only place I have seen on all of the islands that had trash on it. Very strange. Perhaps they will clean it up once actual beach season starts. Or maybe they just don't use beaches.

Sata flies the Bombardier Q400 2-engine prop planes between Terceira and Sao Miguel. This is the same kind of plane that Alaska used to use to fly between Portland and Seattle. (They appear to have upgraded to a small jet). I like these planes, not sure why. Part of it is that the wings are above the windows so you have a great view of the wheels when they come down right out of the engine housing sitting there outside your window. I like to watch the workings of things. You presumably get a better view of the ground also, but when outside is just cloud and sea, that doesn’t help all that much. The flight from Terceira is short and sweet, you barely have time to clear your ears. The wind was blowing and we got jostled around a bit on landing. I was watching the wheels for touchdown and we hit, bounced up 6 feet, and then came down REALLY HARD. My head got bounced and I lost sight of the wheels. For a second there I thought it had come off. But no… there it was. That is why I am typing this as opposed to being strewn in little pieces all over the runway on Sao Miguel. One thing you never get to do is to find out if the landing really was iffy or if it was just a standard bounce that happens all the time. “Oh, that was nothing. You should have been on the flight last week!!”. 

Wow. And So. Here we are, ready to start our week in Sao Miguel. I better learn how to type the special character for putting the right accent mark over Sao. São. like that. Just need the special Portuguese Keyboard Insert.