The Azores are known for their warm and welcoming, open character. The islands have a strong sense of local community due to its long, fairly isolated history. Where residents often come together for various events and celebrations. There are several, mostly small-scale, traditional religious festivals and music festivals throughout the year, as well as food-oriented gastronomic harvest festivals, such as for wine, fish, meat and pineapple. In short, from traditional festivals to local markets, there is always something happening that brings the people together.
“The Azores are known for their warm and welcoming, open character. Where residents often come together for various events and celebrations.”
The islands are also home to a variety of museums and cultural centers that highlight the region’s unique heritage. Traditional music of the Azores, with its distinctive melodies and rhythms, is often performed in original venues, especially during the summer.
In addition, the Azores are known for their traditional crafts, such as weaving, pottery and embroidery, which are passed down from generation to generation.
Club life is also still very much alive, including the local sports club and harmony.
The old wooden rowing and sailing boats formerly used for whaling are still used recreationally. These so-called botes baleeiros are about 12 meters long and glide quite silently through the sea with the help of rowers or sails. In the case of rowing, the crew consists of 7 people in total, 6 rowers and a coxswain.
The coxswain is in charge of the boat, setting the course and rhythm so that everyone rows in sync. When sailing, the number of crew members is the same, only the roles are slightly different.
Many of these boats are classified as regional whaling heritage. All these boats have local names, such as Pontinha, Maria Pequena in Sao Mateus do Pico, or Ester, Maria Celeste in Lajes do Pico, São Pedro in Calheta or Maria Adelaide in Piedade. At regattas nowadays, these botes baleeiros are towed leashed by motorized tugs as a long marker line along the sailing routes. The same tug boats that used to tow the whales ashore.
The regattas are a major summer attraction for Pico Island. For sports enthusiasts, this can be good practice while these championships are held, in particular around June and August. Sometimes involving boats from neighboring islands (Faial, Graciosa and São Jorge), there are also international competitions such as the International Whaleboat Race, an exchange with New Bedford (US).
The old lookouts, the so-called vigias, strategic points on land once used to search for whales, are now used to spot them for tourist whale watching tours.
It was and is otherwise very common on most islands to be self-sufficient to at least some extent. Many Azoreans still have their own orchards, vegetable gardens and/or vineyards. With that emphasis on fresh, locally produced ingredients, communal harvesting, communal preparation of food such as sausages and preserves and also sharing them by eating together, is therefore still very common.
If you are invited to the slaughter feast, be aware that a pig, for example, simply hangs openly in two halves on the meat hooks for further processing with the set tables around it. Especially for city dwellers, this may take some mental adjustment.
By the way, it is good practice that after participating in the feast, the next day you help with the meat processing.
Besides local cheeses, wine, liquor, preserves and sweets, the fresh wheat and corn bread is also of quite a variety, with a little luck from the original wood oven at home that many adegas still have.
Water tanks are also a common feature. In the past, they were used not only to store water for daily use, but also to dry grain for the next season. Many of them were so large they even had a built-in area within the tank’s basin, set aside for washing clothes. Nowadays these tanks are still highly valued for garden purposes and as it is so characteristic in the landscape.
