Impressive Pico Island: Going Down and Around the Azores

The town of Lajes do Pico, Pico Island, which was once a whaling port, and today offers whale watching and a whale heritage exhibit. Paul Shoul photos.
The town of Lajes do Pico, Pico Island, which was once a whaling port, and today offers whale watching and a whale heritage exhibit. Paul Shoul photos.

Pico Offers Dramatic vistas, Volcanic Vineyards, with the Atlantic All-Around

By Max Hartshorne
GoNOMAD Editor

A birthday celebration at the Aldeia da Fontes Nature Hotel on Pico Island.
A birthday celebration at the Aldeia da Fontes Nature Hotel on Pico Island.

Far out in the Atlantic, with an eponymous volcano looming in its center, Pico Island is a place for exploring, both underground and above.

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It’s really like no other place on Earth, with its volcanic rock wall-enclosed vineyards and miles of jagged, pristine coastline.

Pico is one of the nine Azores Islands, which are independent territories of Portugal, and is known as the Black Island because of the volcanic eruptions that created the island’s black soil and craggy coastline.

With only 14,000 residents, and 43 km long, there is plenty of room to enjoy its beauty and like Portugal, this small island’s reasonable costs for travelers.

Plane from Ponta Delgada

One of many small vacation houses enjoyed by islanders who live here half the year.
One of many small vacation houses enjoyed by islanders who live here half the year.

On a recent visit in September, we arrived by on a SATA Azores Airlines Q400 turboprop plane from the Azores’ capital city, Ponta Delgada, and set out on a 45-minute journey around the island to the main resort, the Aldeia da Fonte Nature hotel on the west coast.

Our guide on the island was Jose Sousa da Silva, who runs an outfit called Naturfactor, offering all manner of tours and guided expeditions on Pico. We asked him what it was like to live on such a small island with just 14,000 other residents.

He said it took some getting used to, but now he’s happy to be married with a child and building a successful tour business along with working for the government on sports programs.

Sunset on Mount Pico, the volcanic center of Pico Island. Paul Shoul photo.
Sunset on Mount Pico, the volcanic center of Pico Island.

A Young Island

At Gruta das Torres, visitors don hard hats and climb down 100 feet to hike in a lava tunnel.
At Gruta das Torres, visitors don hard hats and climb down 100 feet to hike in a lava tunnel.

In geological time, Pico is one of the world’s youngest places, only 300,000 years old, formed by multiple eruptions and lava flow from the more than 200 volcanoes that dot the countryside. In some places, it’s a mere 200,000 years old!

Gruta das Torres is a cave tunnel you can explore where lava cut a 4000-meter underground path thousands of years ago.

Today helmet-wearing visitors can tour these subterranean channels and suspend all of their senses when the lights are all turned off.

Standing in the most absolute and sheer silence you can imagine 100 feet below the ground is something everyone should experience.

We were told that Swedish yoga practitioners have begun holding sessions down here, taking advantage of the lack of distraction that the inky blackness can bring, unlike any other place above ground.

Gruta das Torres is one of the 17 caves (out of 28 found here) in Pico Island on the list of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites on the Azores.

Verdelho, the Pico Grape

The corrals on the western side of Pico, low volcanic rock fences built to shelter grape vines.
The corrals on the western side of Pico, low volcanic rock fences built to shelter grape vines.

Pico’s long been a place to grow the favorite white wine local grape, Verdelho, and the way they do it has earned the island’s vineyards another spot on the UNESCO World Heritage sites list.

The vines grow in small ‘corrals’ created hundreds of years ago by building fences using the volcanic rock, and they grow the vines very low to the ground to avoid contamination by salt and blowing winds.

From the air, you can see it’s a series of crudely yet cleverly built square enclosures, each not much bigger than about 8 feet by 8 feet, and where the vineyards change ownership, the fences are just a bit higher.

Small openings in adjacent corrals allow workers to walk from one to the other during the harvest and production.

We took a bike ride on the red dirt pathways through these unusual vineyards and met up with two gentlemen who were very friendly and eager to show us their rudimentary winemaking process.

Augusto Silva shows us where he makes his homemade herbal liqueurs at his farm on Pico. Paul Shoul photo.
Augusto Silva shows us where he makes his homemade herbal liqueurs at his farm on Pico.

No fancy lawns and gigantic tasting rooms here, instead, we entered a small building that looked like someone’s backyard tool shed and Jose Tavares slipped a siphon into his mouth and sucked out some of the latest wine for us to try.

This was another Verdelho white, but he was most keen for us to try his homemade grappa. Despite the hour, 10 am, we agreed, and it was strong and tasty.

Later his friend, Augusto Silva, invited us to see his hooch shed and we obliged, sipping the strong aguardiente liquor and admiring the huge plants he grows for nurseries, along with bananas and a multitude of vegetables. Pico is a fertile place indeed.

Mount Pico

You can’t drive anywhere in Pico without seeing the cloudy peak of the eponymous volcano, Mount Pico, which is an excellent choice for a half-day climb.

It’s a Pico tradition, and the highest mountain in all of Portugal, at 7713 feet high. Don’t worry, the last time this big volcano erupted was back in 1718, and it did rumble to life a bit in 2009, so far there has been no lava flows, just gas and steam.

Hiking trails are available and the ascent to the summit can be made in around two to four hours from the trailhead for persons in good shape, depending on weather which can be quite treacherous especially in winter months.

A memorial to the many harpooners who made a living whaling on Pico up until 1981.
A memorial to the many harpooners who made their living whaling on Pico up until 1981.

Sperm Whalers

For generations, Pico was known as a whaling island, hundreds of local men and women worked in whale processing and hunting.

The last whale was harpooned in 1981 with one of the small boats that still sits in the harbor at Lajes do Pico, which today boasts whale watching tours instead of killing machines.

The view of Mount Pico is especially beautiful here. Sperm whales are the prize that the whale watching boats go to see today, their numbers have increased dramatically since the last kill.

Today with just thousands of sperm whales living in the world’s oceans, the species is vulnerable, but not endangered. It’s fun to see the whaler’s museum here and learn about their lives, despite most people’s abhorrence to killing these majestic ocean mammals. Things were different back then I guess.

Pico Island's economy is mostly based on agriculture and tourism, cows dot the landscape kept in by fences built from the volcanic rock.
Pico Island’s economy is mostly based on agriculture and tourism, cows dot the landscape kept in by fences built from the volcanic rock

Pico’s history has been tough–today less than half of the peak population lives here, and Jose said that most of the people who live here have two homes–a simple house or cabin on the ocean and another house for the rest of the year.

The island is supplied by a weekly container ship visit, which brings supplies and doesn’t make everything crazy expensive.

We enjoyed a great lunch at the Snack Bar Simpatia in Madalena, the main town, with delicious regional dishes that cost between 6.50 and 9.50 euros and it was around 32 euros for three. Espressos were just .60 euros.

Our accommodations at the Aldeia da Fonte Nature Hotel were first-rate. We just wished we could have spent a little time around their pool overlooking the Atlantic ocean and hiked the grounds, as a nature hotel they offer a lot of ways to enjoy the local scenery.

Atlantic swordfish is always served with potatoes, all over the Azores.
Atlantic swordfish is always served with potatoes, all over the Azores.

The hotel’s tours include whale watches, climbing Mount Pico, nature hikes and tours around the island’s perimeter.

Savoring the Seafood

Lunch at the Simpatia Cafe, blood and Portuguese sausage, and the ubiquitous potatoes.
Lunch at the Simpatia Cafe, blood and Portuguese sausage, and the ubiquitous potatoes or fries.

Aldeia’s restaurant offered us our first chance to savor the seafood for which Pico and the Azores have become famous.

Swordfish grilled simply with lemon and olive oil and paired with a Verdelho white was the perfect repast, along with a hearty wild rabbit stew as we sat outside in candlelight in their grotto.

We got to know some of the other hotel guests, well-traveled Lisbonites who had come to Pico for the weekend, and shared some of their favorite Lisbon attractions with us and drank more wine until we all might have wished we had stopped earlier.

But that’s part of what makes travel special, isn’t it?

Getting There: SATA Azores Airlines has flights from Boston and also serves Pico Island.

Find out more about visiting Pico at www.visitazores.com/en

Accommodations on Pico: Aldeia da Fonte Nature Hotel, 351-292-679-500

Hire Jose Sousa da Silva for a tour of Pico at www.naturfactor.com 351-914-234-941

This trip was partly sponsored by Azores Tourism, but the opinions are the author’s own.

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