How to celebrate Carnival on Terceira

Every year, we take a February trip to celebrate our birthdays. So, when we booked our winter trip to the Azores, that’s how we chose our dates. Then, as we began to plan out our itinerary, we stumbled across the fact that Carnival would be happening smack in the middle of our stay. WHAAAT?! Being that Richmond, VA doesn’t really outwardly celebrate the lead-up to Lent, this hadn’t even entered our minds. To complicate things a little bit, when I started Googling how to celebrate Carnival on Terceira, the island we planned to explore, I found very little other than “you can watch satirical dances.” I mean… cool?

Happily, we ended up getting to learn about Terceira’s long-standing Carnival traditions, up close and personal, with the help of some incredibly warm and hospitable local folks. And we had a blast!

So… what IS Carnival?

If you’ve ever seen New Orleans, Venice or Rio de Janeiro in the lead up to Ash Wednesday, you already have a pretty solid idea of what Carnival is. Often celebrated in countries with a majority Catholic population, Carnival uses songs, theater, dancing, and costumes to depict all things satirical and socially upside-down. This practice has traditionally given people of all stripes and classes a chance to come together in the spirit of poking fun at daily life and the forces that govern them before they go into the next holy season of Lent.

Most Carnival celebrants also shirk normal expectations of work and self-discipline when it comes to earthly pleasures and excesses. Because the Carnival season leads directly to Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent, it makes sense to indulge while you can. Often, celebrants feast – traditionally, this was to purposely deplete supplies of the types of foods and drinks they didn’t want to be tempted with during Lent (meats, cheeses, butter, and sweets, among other things). Now, it’s more of a final celebration before heading into a season of fasting and discipline.

In New Orleans, this all takes the form of Mardi Gras, where excessive drinking, eating, and some level of sexual debauchery are all perfectly acceptable amidst all the costumes, parades, and music. In Brazil, where Rio de Janeiro holds the largest Carnival celebration in the world, parades and mass celebrations are the most recognizable attraction (we all know what those tiny fabulous rhinestone and sequinned outfits with the giant headdresses look like!). But, like other Carnival celebrations, Rio and other Brazilian cities also have party blocks populated by bands of musicians and dancers who sing traditional, satirical, and sometimes crude songs. In Venice, people don masks as they party in the streets with performers and neighbors, hiding their faces from demons and notoriety regarding the debauchery and sins they may commit. And of course, Terceira has its own take on this long-standing tradition – though, admittedly, it’s a bit more tame than scantily-clad dancers 😉

More about the history of Carnival on Terceira

As a historically Portuguese archipelago, Terceira and the rest of the Azores have taken many of their Carnival cues from the mainland. For three days and three nights leading up to Ash Wednesday, many businesses and restaurants close so people can rest during the day, then go out at night to eat, drink, and celebrate.

But that doesn’t mean daylight hours are completely boring. As we drove around Angra do Heroismo and other towns on the island, we crossed paths with traveling bands of dancers and musicians in gaudy costumes, who would stop in squares or on prominent corners to serenade passersby with traditional and satirical songs.

We also passed by Angra’s theater, where every night of Carnival sees satirical plays, political plays, and dancing happen all night. Needless to say, tickets had sold out well before we knew about them, as it’s a very nostalgic tradition for many families to go to the plays together. In fact, all of these dances are so integral to the culture that they practice is currently in the process of being officially accepted as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Portugal, which may ultimately lead to them being classified as part of UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

So, when you participate in Carnival on Terceira, you can dance on the streets of a city classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, while you watch celebrations that may also soon be protected by UNESCO, while eating foods that have been served at this time of year for hundreds of years. It’s a party, culture, and history-lover’s dream come true.

In which we learn how to celebrate Carnival like a Terceirense

We knew we’d be on the island in time for Carnival, but we had absolutely no idea what that would entail. While we talked to one of our fantastic guides, we mentioned that we wanted to participate but didn’t know where to start. To our surprise and delight, he invited us out that night to celebrate the second night of Carnival with his family and another couple our age that he’d recently worked with. His wife, Marisa, immediately started texting us with plans for makeup and silly costumes. She explained that, while Halloween costumes skew more towards the creepy and supernatural, Carnival costumes should be funny, silly, or in some way satirical. She suggested that the girls dress like dolls, and she went to one of the Chinese-run costume shops that spring up in Angra do Heroismo before Carnival to pick up some cute hair bows and some sequinned ties for the men. In the meantime, our group made plans to meet for a late (for us) dinner at downtown Birou Bar, which is on the Rua de Sāo Joāo and  would be right in the center of the action come about 11pm.

Birou Bar is fantastic enough as it is, but as we enjoyed our dinner and got to know each other, we steadily noticed more and more locals filtering in for drinks before the night’s celebration started. And how did we know they were locals? Because John Travolta and Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction were standing at the bar watching football, while a big group of sashimi sushi (complete with chopsticks in their hair) crowded around a table next to us. A biker chick in full leathers pushed her way through the growing crowd, and I got bumped in the head by an angel’s wings as she passed. We traded recipes, Facebook pages, phone numbers, and laughs with our party, and had a wonderful time. Once we were suitably full of food and sangria, we paid the check and headed out onto the Rua de Sāo Joāo, where folks had started to gather and music had started to blare from giant speakers on the sidewalks.

We hopped over to the blues club across the street and went upstairs for a round of shots with the whole group (we basically shot Fireball and I almost died) and another round of drinks while we waited for the party to really get going. Most of the buildings along Rua de Sāo Joāo throw open their second and third floor windows and balconies, and let celebrants venture outside to get a bird’s eye view of the crowd. This is exactly what the blues club did, and while cowboys, girls in poodle skirts, and a very pretty Betty Rubble (among others) danced inside with their drinks, we went out to get a look at the street.

Strangely, we also met a pair of American expats who got very excited when they heard us speaking American English. Apparently, they’d been living in Spain for a few years and decided to explore the Azores on a whim. They made room for us on their balcony so we could all dance and take videos of the ever-growing crowd below.

Finally, we headed back down into the street to join the crowd. Surrounded by “Saudis”, a large flock of sheep, a couple of 90s rappers, and more, we danced under pulsing, colorful spotlights to what our hosts explained were some extremely crude songs. Crude to the point where our guide was turning a little red trying to translate the chorus of one of them for me – and I, of course, couldn’t stop laughing. We took tons of selfies, ordered more drinks from tables on the street, and danced like crazy.

But despite being pleasantly drunk and enjoying all the lights and costumes, once we hit about 1am, the tame ones (i.e. us silly Americans who had been up and acting like tourists all day) decided we needed to grab some shuteye, so Marisa very kindly offered to drive the four of us back to our hotels. As we went, we passed four men dressed as nuns, led by an (also still male) Pope. That pretty much sums up the whole experience, I think.

Exhausted, Luke and I fell into bed and slept like the dead.

And when we finally woke up at 7:30am for our 8:30am tour? We could still hear bass pulsing from downtown Angra.

Is going to Carnival worth it if I don’t have local friends?

Absolutely! The only criteria is that you need to stop at a cheap costume shop so you look goobery. Then, you need to show up to Rua de Sāo Joāo right around 10:30pm. We highly recommend that you eat first, but there are plenty of restaurants nearby, so you’ll be fine. Also, most people on Terceira speak English very well, so you’ll have no problem ordering drinks and snacks while you party. And if you drive around during the day, or walk through Angra, you’ll definitely get to see some of the traveling music troupes. They’re worth looking out for!

The only things you’ll miss out on might be:

• the fun of hanging out with a group, and
• the whole “I have no idea what this very loud song means” situation.

But here’s the thing – bring the party with you, and just assume that any song you’re singing along to in the street is probably referencing someone’s ballsack. We promise you’ll be fine.

Remember to celebrate!