Graciosa Island, Azores

Another day, another Furna Do Enxofre Caldeira. The lava cave here was the reason we came to Graciosa. I didn’t realize there was one on Terceira as well, until we got there.

We had given a load of laundry to Isabel yesterday, with instructions to wash and not dry. She came back with a drying rack, and by this morning all our clothes were dry. We’re now good to get ourselves home with clean clothes.

After breakfast, we dropped by the local supermarket (it closed at 1pm on Sundays) to get some charcuterie for dinner. It was slim pickings, and no bread as the bakers all take Sundays off.

Anyways the lava cave was just a 15 minute drive from our bnb. (The island is so small that anything is within a 30 minute drive). It’s in the middle of a larger caldera. From the parking lot, it’s about 150 steps down to the visitor center. We bought our tickets, taking note of the monitors displaying the CO₂ levels at various locations in the cave. The lowest point of the cave accessible to tourists was at 0.04%, which was slightly above normal atmosphere of 0.033%, and well below the permissible exposure limit of 0.5%. The danger is from CO₂ suddenly degassing from the lake.

From the visitors centre, it’s another bunch of stairs down to the tower, and then another 37m down a circular staircase to the cave entrance. There’s windows along the staircase to look out, except pigeons are fond of landing on the window ledges and then pooping. Luckily there was no one climbing up at the same time as we didn’t want to brush up against the sides of the narrow staircase.

At the bottom, there’s an elevated boardwalk leading into the cave. At the end is a view down into a bubbling mud fumarole. Only then did I notice that in the background of the cave was a lake! There’s dim lighting throughout the cave, so it’s easy to see but hard to get context. There’s also a rowboat used by researchers, and once I saw that it was easier to see the lake. Back in the day, tourists were allowed down to lake level, but there’s more danger there from sudden CO₂ emissions.

We took a bunch of pics, trying to illustrate the lake and cave in the frame. Then it was back up all those stairs.

We spent some time in the visitor centre reading all the displays. Then back up a bunch more stairs to the car.

We stopped by another supermarket on the north end, hoping for bread, but it was the same story. Picked up some crackers instead. While I was shopping, Heather was able to watch a Holy Spirit procession. We had read about these in the museums, and it was cool to see it in real life. (Editor's note: the procession more likely was related to Festas do Senhor Santo Cristo dos Milagres)

Next we drove up to the lighthouse on the east side of the island, Farol do Carapacho, up top of a hill. It was a beautiful looking lighthouse per Heather. It had nice viewpoints for taking in the view. There’s also an old whaler’s lookout, where the lookout person was stationed all day watching for whales. We had seen these on a couple other islands in the Azores so we knew what it was :)

We then drove back down the hill to a lunch place I had found on Google Maps. The restaurant turned out to be part of a spa, open to non-spa users. The spa was busy, based on the number of cars in the parking lot.

Lunch was pretty good, we had a potato soup starter and then I had the grilled calamari and Heather the seafood with rice. It was our big meal of the day, as it was Sunday and not much open for dinner.

It was still early afternoon so we continued our drive around the island to the lighthouse on the west end, Farol da Ponta da Barca. It was another nice-looking lighthouse, although without the visitor viewpoints. It was super windy (it was this way the whole time we were on Graciosa) and we were worried about a gust taking us over the cliff edge so we stayed safely away.

We then drove about five minutes east to the capital of Graciosa, Santa Cruz. We parked in the centre, and then walked over to a windmill to take pics. Graciosa is also known for its restored windmills, some of which have been converted to bnbs.

We also saw (and heard) cars on a race track just below the windmills. It looked like a closed circuit where folks could race their cars one at a time. There was a crowd watching the cars (as much as you can get a crowd on Graciosa), looked like the thing to do on a Sunday.

We also walked a bit around Santa Cruz and took more pics, everything picturesque.

We then tried to visit a couple more windmills, but it was five minutes later and the weather had changed, with sideways rain. We decided we already had enough pics of windmills.

We drove back to the bnb, waited five minutes in the car and it was sunny again.

We relaxed the rest of the day. The charcuterie was so-so, we were still full from our big lunch so it was okay. We meant to get a start on packing but figured we’d have time in the morning.