Carnival

Marco and his parents recommended we experience Carnival Terceira-style. There are no parades or dancing in the streets. For 4 days before Lent the people gather in their local community centres. Non-professional theatre groups practice for weeks and then they travel to each community to perform their act, kind of like a Fringe Festival act that comes to you.. On our way home from Angra we stopped at the community centre to judge for ourselves. An unusual combination of brightly dressed musicians played and marched around the stage and the female band leader sang. This was followed by a 30 minute one act play, all in Portuguese of course, wrapping up with more band music and singing. These plays are usually comedy or political satire and we think this one was comedy with very few laughs from the audience of maybe 200 people. Before the next act performs, they shoot off a large and very loud firecracker to notify everyone of the next show, which can mean waiting anywhere from 30 minutes to 2 hours. The people take this very seriously as this goes on until 4 in the morning and then they start all over again around 5 pm. They do this for 4 straight days. Only in Terceira!Read more