Horta: Part 5

This is a very interesting plant outside the Internacional Cafe where I spent many an hour on my computer. All of Horta has free wifi. I loved it. You could do your email in the park, in the laundry room, outside, on the boat, everywhere. I wish Toronto would purchase free wifi for us. The city of Horta pays for it.

We rafted on the sea wall in Horta. You can see there is dark boat, then a white boat and then a red boat, that's our's or Jim's, then another white boat so the boats are rafted on each other and the dark boat is tied to the sea wall. You can really fit a lot of boats in by doing the docking like this. One day, when the tide had gone out, I tried to jump from the dark boat to the sea wall and missed it and fell into the ocean between the dark boat and the sea wall. I hung onto one of the fenders and screamed for help but no one could see me because I was below the boats...anyway soon Alec came to my rescue. I had my knapsack on and my camera was in my pocket. My camera didn't like the salt water...it never worked again and the camera batteries in my knapsack rusted but I got out OK.

Captain Jim is up the mast putting up the antenna for the single side band radio.

Here Capt'n Jim is making fried bread in the frying pan. He made the best fried bread ever.

This is a newly made friend, Serio. He helped me get my computer to pick up the free wifi. I visited him often at his computer shop, cleaning up my computer and getting a headset and microphone to use Skype and memory sticks to save pictures on. He was a great help.

One Sunday we went to mass in this beautiful Catholic Church. The mass was two hours long and in Portugese. The music was beautiful and it was very interesting to see their traditions.

Here I'm playing with my shadow. We walked a lot each day and this day we walked up to the Observatory and could see all over the island of Faial.

Here I am up at the Observatory above Horta. It is soooooo beautiful.

This is Pico through the masts at sunset.

Sunset over Horta on Faial.

On this day we were walking up the hill on the other side of Horta to where the man that sold Scrimshaw was. This is Pico on Pico Island.

This is the man that made the Scrimshaw. He painted on Sperm Whales teeth only. They are behind us on the shelves. The cheapest one was 100 Euros. He said that the Sperm Whales were the only whales that floated after they died and therefore you can get their teeth whereas the other whales sink. He said that there would be no more Sperm Whales in 20 years and so his art was a dieing art. The drawings were very detailed and beautiful.

This was a small, abandoned house on the path up to the Scrimshaw place. I just loved it. I wonder how long we could live there as squatters before someone booted us out?

This is Anth in one of the parks we walked through on the side of the hill just outside Horta.

Here we are provisioning for the boat. In St. John's the grocery store was at the top of a very steep hill and here in Horta the Modelo, grocery store, was at the top of a very steep hill too. Once we had my knapsack full and our hands full of grocery bags a very nice young lady picked us up in her little van and took us right to our boat. That was just awesome.

Parrots live on boats too.

Anthony and I painted the...I don't know what it's called...all the boats that come into Horta paint something like this with their boat name, the year they sailed there and the people on board so we were really pleased to be able to put our names on the sea wall with all the other boats and people that had sailed there from all over the world.

This is Jim Christie and Anth and I having a pint outside of Internacional Cafe in Horta, celebrating a beautiful sunny day on land.

This is on your right as you come into Horta. See the little white house? That is where Anth and I walked up to to see the Scrimshaw. The fences or lines of greenery you can see on the hill are very old stone fences with bamboo grown up above the fences to divide the fields. The cows were few and they were tethered in the pastures.