Terceira means
"the Third", and although the meaning rather referring to the two
facts that it is not only the third one to have been discovered but also the
third largest of the Azores, it is certainly a suitable name for us, too. We
visit Terceira as the third place in the third archipelago of our journey. And
the last one. As if the skies knew, they make it a little easier for us to say
Farewell, not much sunshine today, but rather foggy, so our visit to the
observation platform of Serre do Cume is rather a
"if-it-weren't-cloudy-we-could-see-the-following" thing. Not a big
thing, there is more to the island than this view alone.
The 400 square
kilometers are inhabited by 56.000 people and almost as many cows, mostly the
black-and-white Holstein variety, very well known to our German guests.
Although on the other Azores the emphasis of employment is rather in the
service sector, dairy produce is the main income for the Terceirans. Cattle are
deeply woven into the islanders history: In the year 1581 the islands bay of
Salga was under attack from the Spanish who thought their invasion was
unnoticed. A farmers wife not only alarmed the men who then went to fight, but
also released all the bulls from the pastures and shooed them down to the
beach. The raging animals violently drove the Spanish troops back to where they
came from. 
Ever since the
bulls are part of the island's coat of arms and they enjoy an enormous respect:
Terceira hosts no less than 260 bull fights every year between May and
December. But other than the much despised, bloody events with a dead animal in
the end, here the bulls can rampage among the crowd as it takes their fancy.
These "bull on a string" events bring thousands of people into the
streets, many of wich end up with broken bones. They really like this, the
Azoreans...
Terceira was
stage for historic events more than once, important battles of the
Spanish-Portuguese War and the Portuguese Civil War were fought here. Hence the
names Angra do Heroismo, the bay of heroics, and Praia do Vitoria, victory
beach, and hence also the existence of the fortress of Monte Brasil which today
is a curiously fortified leisure park. But also during WW II it proved to be
the ideal location in the Atlantic, serving well to install a long runway on a
lava platform for aircrafts of the Allied Forces. That did not change much
during the cold war, and even today there is a mixed use of the airport for
military (mainly American) and civil use.
Geologically,
Terceira is sitting on probably the most precarious spot of the whole
archipelago, right atop the "Terceira rift", an active spreading
centre that manifests itself impressively in the "Furnas", steaming
vents in the centre of the island. The spreading did not only rip the tiny
"Goat Islands" apart but also caused the severe earthquake of 1980
that destroyed a large number of the historic buildings. Many have been
repaired since, but others had to be left to the forces of nature. This didn't
keep UNESCO from taking Angra do Heroismo into the list of World Heritage Sites
in 1983.
History, nature
and the cultural mix that came with Terceira's role as important port resulted
in a small, but open-minded and friendly society with a huge tolerance to
strangers. So it is probably the hidden gem of the Azores.
Glad that we
visited it as the last one. The Third.
