“The Azores
It is the Portuguese equivalent of Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, a hot, murky lake with steam rising from it, fed by a geothermal spring and filled with bathers taking to the waters in pursuit of health, happiness and surreptitious snogging.
There the comparison ends, since this thermal pool in Furnas, on the island of Sao Miguel in the Azores, is muddy brown because of iron in the water and dyes your toenails orange, while the backdrop is not the Svartsengi power plant but the palms, ferns and conifers of a subtropical Atlantic forest.
“These trees are living fossils,” says Antonio, our guide, as we walk among the millennia-old cycads and ginkgo bilobas of Terra Nostra Botanical Garden, of which this lake is the centrepiece. In the Endemic Garden, he points out uva de serra (mountain grape), unique to the Azores, and subspecies of European shrubs and trees such as laurel, chestnut, heather and holly.
“It’s how European forests were before the Ice Age,” he says, “which left these islands untouched. The weather is always mild due to the Gulf Stream.” Step from the waters of the “Brown Lagoon”, quite possibly with a catkin laced around your ankle, and the air temperature is a benign 79F (26C) in August, instead of the 52F (14C) you can expect in Reykjavik.
Oddly, it still feels chilly because the iron-rich water is the temperature of a hot bath, having bubbled up through the fumarole field beneath Furnas at a piping hot 109F (43C).
Like Iceland, Sao Miguel was created by outpourings of lava from the ocean floor millions of years ago, although Pico, the youngest of the nine islands that comprise the Azores archipelago, is only 300,000 years old.
And like Iceland, the Azores straddle the mid-Atlantic Ridge where Eurasian and North American tectonic plates collide, forming a puckered seam of submarine rock stretching 10,000 miles from Greenland to the South Atlantic.
A third moving slab, the African Plate, rubs up against the other two – and in the triangle where these titanic forces meet, the Azores were formed in an explosion of seawater, pillow lava, fire and brimstone. As with Iceland, it is a vulcanologist’s dream. Unlike Iceland they lie on the same latitude as the south of Spain – and in the summer the climate is as benign as the Mediterranean’s.
Even if geology is not your thing, it is hard to visit either destination without becoming immersed in its volcanic history – often quite literally. Furnas is awash with thermal baths, the most charming being in Rua da Agua Quente (“Hot Water Street”), where villagers gather as the evening light fades to chat in a labyrinth of terraced pools fed by a hot stream, some sitting under a weir where the healing water cascades over them. The atmosphere is spiritual.
Quinta da Mo, where we stayed, is a short walk from here – a converted water mill surrounded by three contemporary timber-clad chalets, like an architect’s drawing sprung to life. Fixtures and fittings are more boutique hotel than self-catering, and guests are woken by the crowing of cockerels and the roar of a stream that runs through woodlands bordering the estate.
At the other end of the village, located inside the rim of a huge extinct volcano, locals cook milho cozido (boiled corn on the cob) in sacks suspended in the bubbling, steaming craters of the Caldeiras das Furnas. It’s an eerie place where, at Christmas time, nativity cribs filled with biblical figures are placed among the fumaroles and lit by fairy lights, taking care to avoid one hissing fissure called “The Devil’s Hob”, which has supernatural associations.
Nearby, the curious can do a comparative tasting of mineral waters – some hot, some cold, some salty, some sulphurous, some sparkling, some utterly disgusting – as they gush from pipes in the rock face.
This Epicureanism is taken a stage further at the Terra Nostra Garden Hotel, adjoining the botanical garden, where sous-chef Luis Arruda prepares cozido das furnas – a stew of meat, yams, potatoes, vegetables and sometimes salted codfish – slow-cooked by burying the pot underground, close to the raging heat of the calderas.
On a half-day cookery course, he begins by taking us shopping for the ingredients. Then we drive to the Caldeiras da Lagoa, steaming sulphurous ponds like Rotorua in New Zealand, this time next to a green, sterile lake where nothing much moves apart from pedalos.
In the kitchens of a lakeside café, we wash the ingredients and layer them in a huge pot wrapped in muslin and tied with string, then lug it over to a patch among the fumaroles where holes have been dug and sealed with wooden covers. Using long hooks, Luis and I lower our pot into the chosen recess, marked with a numbered peg to avoid confusing it with others.
The lid goes on and Luis shrugs. “Once it’s in the ground, the stew cooks itself,” he says. “It takes six hours.” Back at the Terra Nostra Garden Hotel, we tuck into a hearty plateful that smells and tastes not of sulphur exactly but it is oddly smoky, extremely salty and the meat is quite dry, like a crumbly saucisse sèche.
Next day, we tour the island with a geologist to learn more about its volcanic origins, go caving down a lava tube – a natural tunnel along which molten rock once flowed – and visit the Ribeira Grande geothermal power station. On our last day in Furnas, we take a taxi to the beach at Ribeira Quente (“Hot River”), through a valley that punches through the crater’s rim and is filled with blue hydrangeas. In this fairy glade, there are picnic tables and benches, encouraging families to chill out, chat and eat together.
The glorious beach at Ribeira Quente is unusual in having golden sand. For the most part, the coastline of the Azores is rugged, rocky and unyielding, hence the piscinas naturales – swimming pools sculpted from a lagoon or rock pool, perhaps enhanced by a diving board, a raft, concrete steps leading down into the water, and a kiosk serving drinks and snacks.
On Pico, a one-hour flight away, virtually every coastal village has a piscina naturale. Our favourite is at Santo Amaro, a tiny fishing village within easy cycling distance of our property in Prainha – Casa da Moega, a former adega (winemaker’s dwelling) built of black volcanic rock. While we order Sagres beers and pasties da bacalhau (salt fish fritters), our seven year-old hurls himself repeatedly into the safe waters of the harbour. It begins to rain but nobody cares; people carry on swimming, knowing the shower will pass.
The rain, the surreal quality of the light and the sight of people chest-deep in water, remind me of the Blue Lagoon again – and the parallels with Iceland go further. Whaling runs deep in both cultures, reflected in the many whale-related activities for tourists.
On a whale-watching trip out of Ponta Delgada, Sao Miguel‘s capital, we see no whales but our boat is escorted by hundreds of dolphins. Next day, we snorkel among four species – Common, Atlantic Bottlenose, Atlantic Spotted and Risso’s. As they streak below us in the indigo water, emitting clicks and whistles, it is the ultimate wild swim.
At Lajes, we spend an hour at the Whaling Museum with its full-sized replica of a wooden harpooning boat. In Cais do Pico, we visit the whale-processing factory, closed in 1984, and peer into the pressure cookers where body parts were rendered to make oil from blubber, “meat pies” – ground whalebone and gristle, used as animal feed – and supplements of vitamin A and D from the liver. “Only the intestines went to waste,” says Joao, our guide. “They were dragged out to sea and dumped miles from land so as not to attract sharks.”
Some say Pico and neighbouring Faial are the best islands for whale-watching, because of the underwater cliffs that drop away into the abyss, a feeding ground for blue whales, humpbacks and other leviathans.
An Italian couple we met saw nine sperm whales pass beneath their boat, a joyous sighting. I try to imagine the scene, those gargantuan flukes rising from the water before slipping beneath the surface, but the images in my mind don’t look right. No one is wearing shorts and everyone looks cold. It must be Iceland.”
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