Last weekend there was lots going on as it was St Peter’s day, the patron saint of fishermen and high season for tourism in the mountains. We attended a big Festa Junina in Vitória on Friday evening. There was a covered stage in the park built for the Mass celebrated by Pope John Paul ll in 1991.  We watched a number of bands perform some very good music. I learned about Forró – a rock music style  with  strong African roots.

There must have been a couple of thousand people there with all sorts of kiosks selling food and drink. I was struck by several things. First there was little alcohol being drunk. This may have been partly caused by the new tough drink/driving laws. The second was that  few people were dancing, mostly they listened and chatted. The only applause came from the fans who were close to the front of the stage. Another different thing is that almost all the bands I have seen include some sort of piano accordion or concertina. The sound goes very well with rock music.

On Saturday we drove up into the hills behind Vitória. It is very beautiful and extremely fertile. We saw coffee, bananas, orchids and all sorts of fruits and vegetables being grown.  The area is mainly populated by people of German, Austrian and Italian descent. There are lots of restaurants in those styles.

German traditional dancing

I must admit I was not expecting to see men in leather shorts and girls in European country dresses dancing to accordion music. They are strongly promoting rural tourism – another similarity with Andalucía.

All the hotels except one were fully booked and we took the last room available in our hotel. We were a bit reluctant as there was a big wedding that evening and the bar and restaurant would be closed. The band in the VIP room would be about 10 feet over our heads. “No problem” said the receptionist, “join the party, nobody will notice”  We did not really believe this but brought some nice clothes just in case. We arrived mid-afternoon and saw the preparations. Two sound stages, a truck load of beer, another lorry carrying three enormous barrels of wine, a dozen cooks at a giant barbecue with what must have been a ton of meat, five or six different areas of the hotel were set up with bars, tables and chairs.  It was clearly going to be a big affair.

Around 9pm we joined the party.  I guessed that there were around 600/700 people there. Some women were wearing very beautiful long dresses and their men with nicely tailored suits.

The gatecrashers

At the other extreme some young men were wearing shorts, t-shirts and baseball caps on backwards.  In between these two there was clothing of every level of formality. It made me feel at home as I like the feeling that everyone is wearing exactly what they like to wear.

We found a table and sat down and almost immediately a plate of rice, beans and barbecued meat (churrasco) arrived .  I was hungry and enjoyed this. Half way through another plate arrived, piled high with beef. We turned down several offers of more plates of meat. Not even a hint of bread, salad, chips, fruit or anything healthy. Next came a plate of sausages, chorizo black pudding and other meat delicacies. Finally great trays of cakes and other sweet sticky things arrived, not my sort of food. In between I was befriended by a waiter whose only desire in life was to make me drunk. Every time my beer glass was less than half full he magically appeared and filled it up again.  Flavia was getting the same treatment from the waiter with the whisky bottle.

Towards midnight most of the important guests had left the VIP room so we went in and danced to a lively band.  After 20 minutes the waiters came in carrying great joints of roasted beef, carved them and passed the plates around the room.  I tried to eat some, I really did, but I was defeated. We staggered off to bed when the party finished around 1AM. The resident cock started crowing at 3.30AM and the cleaners started work above us at 6.00AM. I remembered why I prefer towns.

When we went to breakfast at 10.00 there was not much evidence of the party. We have asked the hotel to call us the next time they have a wedding