If Adam had to choose his very favorite part of our trip to the Azores, he would undoubtedly choose the moment we unknowingly ran into a bull run in the small town of Serreta! As we were driving we all the sudden hit traffic and were stuck at a dead stop for probably about 20 minutes. I suggested to Adam that he go check out what was going on as I could see people standing around watching something, but it took him waiting 20 minutes to finally get curious enough to walk up and find out what was going on and since I was in the drivers seat…I couldn’t really leave the car myself.
When he got back he was really excited and told me they were having a bull run and that I needed to get out of the car and bring my camera. So I locked the car up and headed to where all the hub bub was, but just as I got there, the line of cars started moving so I had to rush back and move our car. I ended up driving past Adam and then pulled off when I could to pick him up and then we drove to the other side of the town where we parked so that we could continue watching the bull run!
Holy Cow are these bull runs crazy! They basically put a line on one end of the city and then another line on the other end of the city and then let the bull run anywhere in between those two lines. They tie a rope to the bull and then have men dressed up in sombrero’s and black and white following around the bull holding onto the rope to make sure he stays within the boundaries. But people get out in front of these bulls and like to be chased by them and run with them and its super scary and dangerous but these small communities LOVE it! So much so that they have over 230 bull runs during the course of a year just on Terceira island alone! It quite literally is a more than every other day occurrence. Adam thought it was the coolest thing ever!!
We ended up in the streets with the bulls since we don’t live in Serreta and didn’t have somewhere to really hide or watch the run, so we were right in the thick of the crazy and chaos! In fact the bull ended up chasing after us three different times! I thought it was super scary and crazy but such a RUSH too! We ended up jumping into a strawberry patch behind a wall to escape the bull, behind someones fence (that the bull actually rammed right as we jumped in) and then someones door to their yard where the bull once again head butted the door! It was insane but such a crazy cool experience and one that I’m sure we will always remember. I mean how many times in your life do you get to get chased by a bull? The craziest part? Is that it was the LAST bull run of the year and we just so happened to hit it as we were driving through. Pretty lucky if you ask me! It must be because it really did make a lasting impression! Below are the pictures from the blessed event! đ
See the bull in the center of the picture? And everyone starting to try to jump a fence to escape it?
This is not a close up shot! This is a shot I took after we jumped a fence to a safer location!
This was our super close call when the bull started running after us and was just about to get us when a kind man let us jump behind his yard door! He then tried to bring us two beers which was super nice, but we politely declined since we don’t drink. But such awesome people huh? Our friend liked to taunt the bull and got him to ram his door several times! We loved that we felt safe but got such a close encounter with the bull too! Great for pictures for sure!
It definitely was an experience we won’t soon forget! We took off after we saw that bull (they had 4 ready to go for the night) as we still had a lot of the island we wanted to see, but we loved the scenery as we drove! Seeing sun rays coming through the clouds is always one of my favorite things and its even better over water!
Our next destination was to a place called Serra De Santa Barbara which just so happened to be the tallest mountain in Terceira! Unfortunately for us though, it was also completely cloud covered, so the great view we thought we’d have ended up being a very foggy few of just the road in front of us. Bummer! But we did get some pretty nice shots on the way up before we hit the clouds.
This picture is a little blurry but shows some of the cool forests that we got to drive through on our way up.
The bigger island looking thing in the center of the picture is Mount Brazil – the mountain we had walked to from our hotel and then climbed to the top of the day before.
Such a beautiful day full of awesome experiences!