São Miguel Island

São Miguel, the largest island of the Azores at about 760 km², is a string of volcanoes fused together in the middle of the Atlantic, and its nickname, Ilha Verde — the Green Island — describes what that ground has become: crater walls under pasture and forest, lakes lying in the floors of old calderas. The island grew from east to west. Its oldest part, the Nordeste volcano, emerged around four million years ago and still holds the summit, Pico da Vara (1,103 m), whose slopes keep the largest surviving patch of the island's native laurel forest and the endemic Azores bullfinch. Younger centres followed westward, and a field of some 270 small volcanic cones finally joined them into a single island.

At the western end, the caldera of Sete Cidades shelters a twin lake split by a narrow strait and crossed by a bridge; one half reads as green, the other as blue. Local legend tells of a princess and a shepherd forbidden to marry, whose tears filled the two lakes in the colours of their eyes. In the centre of the island, Lagoa do Fogo, the "Lake of Fire", fills the caldera of the Água de Pau volcano: an elliptical lake about 3 by 2.5 km, its shore at 575 m, enclosed by steep crater walls rising to around 949 m, with no buildings allowed around it. To the east, the village of Furnas sits inside a volcanic crater among some thirty springs of differing temperatures and chemistry, steaming caldeiras and fumaroles; its crater lake, Lagoa das Furnas, has fumaroles and mud pools along its northern shore, and the Terra Nostra park lies in the village.

The settlers who arrived in the fifteenth century first made Vila Franca do Campo their capital, until an earthquake and landslides in 1522 shifted the role to Ponta Delgada. Today the largest city of the archipelago and seat of the regional presidency, Ponta Delgada grew on the export of oranges, mainly to Britain, and later of tea, pineapples and tobacco, which paid for much of its building; its historic entrance, the Portas da Cidade, still stands in the centre. Offshore, boats from Ponta Delgada and Vila Franca go out in search of dolphins, sea turtles and whales.

Getting there

John Paul II Ponta Delgada Airport (PDL), the busiest airport in the Azores, lies about 2 km west of the centre of Ponta Delgada, on the south coast. Sete Cidades, Lagoa do Fogo and Furnas are all reached by road from the city; Sete Cidades lies in the west of the island, Lagoa do Fogo in the centre and Furnas in the east.