Just to give you an idea of the typical Portuguese Azorean architecture, blending commonly white painted plastered rock walls with dressed volcanic corners, lintels, window surrounds and cills, steps and walls in a strong contrast of colour and beauty and durability.
It wasn’t long before we enjoyed lunch at the sailors’ haunt, Pete’s Cafe Sport and looked for our Norwegian friends’, Sven and Irene’s flag hanging from the ceiling with a thousand others. No decorative gimmick here, these flags date back many years and are sometimes repeated when a vessel passes through regularly and all signify that sense of achievement unique to sailing across wide, deep oceans.
A Walk on two mounts
After two days on board during strong winds and lots of rain we were ready for a nice walk ashore. But first we had to tend to Zoonie’s mooring. On a beautiful Sunday morning we were both below on our tasks when a French voice called “Allo, allo!” Zoonie was having a nice chat to another moored craft in rather close proximity. Having held us superbly in all the tugging and pulling of the ‘blow’ the shackle pin decided to exit the shackle and release Zoonie to the whims of wind and tide.
I started the engine and took the wheel while Rob hauled in the slippery mass from the water and kept it on deck as we moved to one of the last two buoys in the harbour, which is still holding us secure now as I type and hopefully will continue to do so until next week when we plan to leave.
Our walk took us up the steep and pretty path to the top of Monte Queimado with its array of colourful flowers, the pink multi headed flower is the West Indian Lantana Camara, and down the other side, across the peninsular, where the first underwater telecommunications cable between Europe and the US was laid in 1893, and onto the volcanic Monte de Guia.
There were once vineyards here and some vines still grow unattended within the walls of our lookout over the town.
The Azores were quite late in ending their whaling industry and whales were still being hauled up the slip by the whaling factory with its tall chimney in the 1980’s. More about that and Monte Guia later.
Our legs loved the exercise and we wandered back along the beach to the little cafe with the umbrellas for a refreshing beer.
Our champagne moment
Position 38:31.84N 28:37.37W
Us Three Musketeers from Jori, Anna Caroline and Zoonie who had travelled up the spine of the South and North Atlantic in single file celebrated our arrival in Horta aboard Jori with three bottles of bubbly (Henk was not drinking alcohol and Weitz is tea total anyway, so 4 of us did rather well!), a bottle of wine and a bottle of gin; well of course Henk and Marjolein have to empty their booze cupboard as they are flying home soon, so we were helping them! It was a lovely event especially as Henk was looking so much better.
The next day, quietly and without my remembering our run back to Zoonie in the dinghy(!!) we took a long walk to the hospital to see if we could have a second Covid Jab while we are here, happy with either outcome. The Astra Zeneca vaccination is doing the rounds of the islands at the moment and is not due here for three weeks; also the doctor said we should follow the UK policy of the second jab being done three months after the first, so that would be the beginning of July, when hopefully we’ll be you know where!
On our way back down the hill we thought we’d better do one church while we are here so the interior shots are in the finely named Igreja de Nossa Senhora das Angustias. The flowers were fresh and beautiful and the silverware reminded us of churches in Prague, and Santiago, Spain, very Catholic.
Lunch took the form of a humus salad for me which was yum, and then we were shown around the world famous scrimshaw museum above the bar by a charming young lass who loved her job and missed the visitors during the Covid times.
The whalers used to be paid in whales’ teeth and money from the oil, which would be divided amongst the boat crews when the payment arrived one year after catching the whale; the harpoon man getting the lion’s share. Well this meant the whalers were always poor and waiting for what was owed. The first generation man, Jose Azevedo, who had a craft stall in the town centre, made it his business to keep them in food and funds in the months they waited for their pay. He is depicted on the right hand side whale tooth carving wearing glasses and his son, whose nature was equally hospitable, is to the left. Today’s proprietor of the bar is another Jose Azevedo, the namesake of his great grandfather. Jose’s father was Henrique Azevedo, on the whale’s tooth to the right of his son and during WW2 he served on the Lusitania. Because the commander of the ship thought he resembled his own son, Peter, he gave Henrique that name and hence the name Pete’s Cafe Sport. The Sport accolade coming from the fact Henrique loved sport. The hospitality the generations of Azavedo men offered included the crews of the early trading ships, the whalers as mentioned, the crews of the telecommunications cable laying ships and of course present days crews of pleasure sailing craft like us. A visit to Horta doesn’t qualify until one visits Pete’s Cafe Sport!
Whaling finished in 1985 but since then hoards of whales teeth have been found in the homes of whalers as they have died out and on clearing their homes their families have found the stockpiles and donated them to the supply of scrimshaw ready for the artists’ sharp scalpel. The process of creating the pictures is similar to enamelling. The bone is covered with ink (burnt whale oil in days of old) and then the picture is carved into the bone and revealed as white on black. The process is then reversed by cleaning off the ink and re-applying it so it sticks just to the newly carved areas. A crude description for some beautifully fine work as you can see. Then the sculpting is done with great care to create objects ranging from miniature decanters and goblets, to model ships and jewellery to name just a few.