Graciosa Island, The Azores, Portugal
The typical characteristic of the Azores Islands is their volcanic origin and characteristics. Volcanic hills and cones, stark black basalt, and very stout people who have learned to live with this type of life. Flowers are everywhere in many hues, and vegetation is rampantly green. Sitting on the western side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, one of its main attractions is a caldera on the South end of the island, site of a wonderful volcanic cavern called the “Furna do Emxofre” (or Cavern of Sulphur), where we walked down into. From this point on, we walked down 184 stone steps into the bottom of the furnace, where, as we looked up, we could see the underside of dozens of prisms of columnar basalt, created by the slowly cooling-off lava. In a corner of the cavern floor, we found a series of mud “boilers,” semi-hidden between some rocks. In 1879, Prince Albert I of Monaco visited Graciosa and rappelled down into the cavern to explore some of its geology.
From this point, we traveled to the main village of the island, Santa Cruz, where we visited a small museum with a good collection of agricultural material, as well as winemaking material. Probably the most interesting piece of the museum is a perfectly well conserved “canoa baleeira” or whale boat, with which the Azoreans used to hunt sperm whales!
And, almost as to prepare us for this sight, we had seen sperm whales in the morning, slowly logging or resting at the surface.
The typical characteristic of the Azores Islands is their volcanic origin and characteristics. Volcanic hills and cones, stark black basalt, and very stout people who have learned to live with this type of life. Flowers are everywhere in many hues, and vegetation is rampantly green. Sitting on the western side of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, one of its main attractions is a caldera on the South end of the island, site of a wonderful volcanic cavern called the “Furna do Emxofre” (or Cavern of Sulphur), where we walked down into. From this point on, we walked down 184 stone steps into the bottom of the furnace, where, as we looked up, we could see the underside of dozens of prisms of columnar basalt, created by the slowly cooling-off lava. In a corner of the cavern floor, we found a series of mud “boilers,” semi-hidden between some rocks. In 1879, Prince Albert I of Monaco visited Graciosa and rappelled down into the cavern to explore some of its geology.
From this point, we traveled to the main village of the island, Santa Cruz, where we visited a small museum with a good collection of agricultural material, as well as winemaking material. Probably the most interesting piece of the museum is a perfectly well conserved “canoa baleeira” or whale boat, with which the Azoreans used to hunt sperm whales!
And, almost as to prepare us for this sight, we had seen sperm whales in the morning, slowly logging or resting at the surface.
