Meeting of Continents

If you are like me, you enjoy scouring the atlas for random islands in the middle of the ocean. That pastime, along with the fact that my cousin just moved there, recently took me to the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago smack in the centre of the Atlantic. These islands sprung up at the junction of the Eurasian, African and North American tectonic plates, and you know what that means: volcanoes!

I was on Terceira Island, which is made up of 4 major volcanoes that make up the rhythm of the landscape.

Bubbling magma created a series of caves and caverns inside the island that provide non-claustrophobic tourists with many magnificent stalactite and stalagmite viewing opportunities. Here I was heading down into one such cave. Although this picture reminds me of the movie The Descent, it wasn’t actually scary, and I did not run into any bloodthirsty creatures.

A walk around a geologically active area (there is a boardwalk as to not get burned). This is literally smoke coming out of the ground, scorching some of the vegetation as it comes out.

Terceira does not have very many sand beaches. On the plus side they have this kind of remarkable volcanic landscape which creates small pools of calm water. ‘Beaches’, like this one at Biscoitos (means cookies) often have areas with cement platforms between the rocks where I could spread out my towel. The idea took some getting used to, but sand does stick everywhere and jumping into these deep pools, surrounded by dark, hardened magma and teeming with fish and sea life (I made sure to bring my snorkel everywhere I went in the Azores) was spectacular.

Volcanic activity also results in fertile soil. Much of the island is a patchwork of small holding fields contoured with walls made of dark volcanic rocks that were tilled up from inside the field. These walls also serve to contain the cattle that inhabit many of these fields. I don’t think I had ever seen so many cows and bulls. The fields pictured here are actually in the crater of a volcano.

-Alexandra