Fajã dos Cubres

Interesting facts

The lagoon is protected under the Ramsar Convention as a wetland of international importance, especially as a habitat for waterbirds.

The fajã has no permanent springs or streams, so most of its houses depend on cisterns that collect rainwater.

There has never been a proper harbour here; fishermen traditionally hauled their boats up onto the pebble beach.

Fishing for mullet and anchovy in the lagoon was once a local practice but is now prohibited.

The settlement was badly damaged again by the Azores earthquake of 1 January 1980, more than two centuries after the 1757 disaster.

Plants around the lagoon include the Azorean spurge, a species found only in the Azores, along with sharp rush and wild carrot.

The chapel keeps an old image of Senhor dos Passos on a gilded stand; its feast falls on the second Sunday of September.

Residents have farmed maize, vines, potatoes, tomatoes and onions on the fajã's flat ground beneath the cliffs.

Why it is worth it

Below the sheer green cliffs of São Jorge's northern coast, a flat tongue of land pushes out into the Atlantic, and on it lies a quiet saltwater lagoon with a cluster of houses and a small white chapel at its edge. This is Fajã dos Cubres, one of the island's fajãs: low platforms of debris that formed where the towering cliffs collapsed into the sea, creating level ground in a landscape otherwise almost entirely vertical.

The fajã covers around 0.75 square kilometres in the parish of Ribeira Seca, municipality of Calheta. Much of its present size is attributed to the earthquake of 9 July 1757, the most violent recorded in the Azores, which triggered landslides and rockfalls along the coast and killed more than a thousand people on São Jorge. The lagoon has no open channel to the ocean; seawater filters in through the ground, so the western part is markedly salty while the eastern part is nearly fresh, mild enough to support a small population of frogs. Four small islets dot its surface, and beds of the aquatic plant Ruppia maritima grow in its water, a rarity in the archipelago. Seabirds and migrants use the lagoon as a refuge; nesting species include Cory's shearwater, common tern, yellow-legged gull and common snipe.

The name comes from the cubres, a small yellow-flowered goldenrod (Solidago) that grows abundantly here. The Hermitage of Nossa Senhora de Lurdes was opened to worshippers on 18 October 1908, a gift from António Faustino Nunes, a son of the fajã who had emigrated to California; behind it is a tidal well whose water some once believed to be miraculous. Farmers from the plateau above still bring cattle down to graze on the fajã. About 3 km to the east lies the better-known Fajã da Caldeira de Santo Cristo.

Getting there

Fajã dos Cubres is on the north coast of São Jorge, about 6 km from the town of Calheta. A winding road, asphalted in 1993, descends the cliffs to it from the village of Norte Pequeno. São Jorge Airport (SJZ), near Velas on the same island, is about 18 km away in a straight line; Horta Airport (HOR) is on the neighbouring island of Faial, across the channel.

Fajã dos Cubres

Interesting facts

Why it is worth it

Getting there

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