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Not too blue in Faial

“If you drive non-stop along the primary road, you can complete the loop in about an hour.”

Faial is not a very big island, home to about 15,000 inhabitants, a large caldera at Cabeço Gordo (more on that in a separate post), a relatively new land mass called the Capelinhos, and if the name of one of the hiking trails is anything to go by, a series of 10 volcanoes on a route of 20km (it’ll take 7 hours to hike). To us, Faial is more green from the vegetation than blue, for we didn’t see quite that much blooming hydrangeas that help earn the island its nickname of the Blue Island…

Faial

Faial

Like Pico, micro-climate is everywhere but we largely got lucky and managed to stay ahead of the rain cloud most location we went, unless it happened to be raining heavily islandwide… I managed to get a bunch of postcards written up while waiting for the sky to clear, even as we lamented the loss of time to be out exploring. Or go on a marine excursion.

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Postcards: Capelinhos (PT)

Just under 60 year ago, over at the Azores, the sea was rumbling. Throughout the course of the following 13 months, regular tremors were felt and active volcanic eruptions sent the residents of Faial, especially those on the western half of the island, packing and sailing for Boston after they lost their homes and agricultural lands, abandoned and buried under thick layers of ashes. To this day, the surrounding area remained largely uninhabited.

Capelinhos

Capelinhos

Those who stayed, or came to study the event, saw the birth of a new land mass that attached itself to the Costado da Nau Volcano, extending Faial with an area of about 2.4km² off the coast of Capelo. It was baptised Capelinhos; it is also the most western land point of the Eurasian plate. Today, what we see is a unique landscape of barren layers of submarine ashes and hardened lavas. Mother Nature sure knows how to make an entrance.

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