Ponta da Ferraria — hot spring
The Cosmonaut · CC BY-SA 4.0

Ponta da Ferraria

  • 2 min read
  • 37.853° N 25.850° W

Interesting facts

  • When the crew of HMS Sabrina first saw the 1811 eruption plume, their commander James Tillard took the smoke for a naval battle and sailed towards it.
  • The Sabrina eruption began on 10 June 1811 after months of earthquakes that destroyed many homes in the nearby parish of Ginetes.
  • At its largest the short-lived Sabrina Island is described as a volcanic cone about 2 km around, open to the north-west like the islet off Vila Franca do Campo.
  • Tillard published his eyewitness account of the eruption in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1812.
  • A drawing of the erupting island made from the ship on 19 June 1811 is kept today at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
  • The seabed where Sabrina Island stood now lies about 75 metres down, and volcanic gases can still be seen rising to the surface.
  • The healing waters at Ferraria were already noted in the 16th century by the Azorean chronicler Gaspar Frutuoso in his work Saudades da Terra.
  • Islanders began coming down the steep cliff path for treatments after the first bathhouse was built at Ferraria in 1888.
  • The Ferraria springs produce salty thermal water with an unusually high sulphur content.
  • The lighthouse on the point is a white prismatic tower dating from the early 20th century.

Why it is worth it

At the far western tip of São Miguel in the Azores, a black lava platform juts into the Atlantic below a high sea cliff, and in a rocky inlet on its edge the ocean itself runs warm. Hot springs rise beneath the lava and mix with the incoming waves, so that bathers can swim in seawater heated by the volcano — its temperature rising and falling with the tide. Ponta da Ferraria is a lava delta, or fajã lávica, and it is one of the clearest places on the islands to see how the land of the Azores is still being made.

The headland was built before São Miguel was settled. A Strombolian eruption inland raised a cone of cinders and sent a lava flow down the cliff to the sea, where it spread into a new flat promontory. Where the hot lava met seawater, steam explosions threw up a small cone topped by a crater — a pseudocrater, which unlike a true crater has no volcanic vent beneath it. Its rarity has made it a protected geological monument, and since 2005 Ponta da Ferraria and Pico das Camarinhas have formed a Regional Natural Monument. Two thermal springs rise within the area, feeding both a spa building and the bathing inlet on the shore; a white 18-metre lighthouse marks the point.

The sea off the headland has been volcanically active in historical times as well. In June 1811 a submarine eruption a couple of kilometres offshore built a new island that reached about 20 metres high and roughly a kilometre across. The commander of the British sloop HMS Sabrina landed on it, named it after his ship and claimed it for Britain, starting a diplomatic dispute with Portugal that the sea resolved within months by washing the island away. A viewpoint above the cliff still bears the name Miradouro da Ilha Sabrina.

Getting there

Ponta da Ferraria is in the parish of Ginetes, in the municipality of Ponta Delgada on São Miguel. The city of Ponta Delgada is about 20 km to the east, and the nearest airport is João Paulo II Airport (PDL), about 18 km away.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in the Azores 11The Most Beautiful Places in Portugal 63The Most Beautiful Water Wonders in Portugal 9The Most Beautiful Hot Springs 20The Most Beautiful Water Wonders 429

37.85347, -25.85027per Wikidata