Flourish Island Portugal. Azores Treasures: Flores Island - "This island is not marked on the map - real places are never marked on maps" - LiveJournal. Description and location
On Flores, the few guests are greeted by the equally few local population, “not spoiled” by tourists. The majority of people live in small idyllic villages, which belong on office calendars and souvenir postcards. It"s simply too good to be true...
Everything is somehow sad with car rental here, so we just caught a local guy who drove us around the island for 150 euros. Luckily it's small.
The westernmost and wettest island of the Azores archipelago is replete with waterfalls of all possible shapes and sizes, up to multi-hundred-meter cascades. Some waterfalls look homely and cozy; you can safely climb along their edges for your own pleasure.
Flores Island resembles a layer cake. Basalt alternates with layers of porous ash and lava crumbs. Underwater rivers suddenly fall down from the middle of the cliff, becoming "waterfalls out of nowhere."
The main attraction of the central plateau of the island is the numerous crater lakes filled with multi-colored water. The steep walls of the crater are overgrown with fluffy bushes. The landscape is somewhat reminiscent of the landscapes of the Patagonian Tierra del Fuego.
There are many crater lakes on Flores - Reserva Florestal Natural do Morro Alto. And there is no shortage of observation platforms from which you can admire these lakes.
For all its beauty, the interior of the island is not easy to see - an impenetrable fog often covers the entire island, and the lower cloud limit is somewhere around 300-500 meters. Therefore, any sunny day should be perceived as a unique chance, a gift of fate!
The humid microclimate greatly affects the island's vegetation. The mountain slopes at an altitude of 800-900 meters are overgrown with an amazing forest - bonsai. The kingdom of meter-thick moss cushions and intricately curved junipers stretches for kilometers, but it’s not realistic to walk there.
“Moss Gardens”, freely and widely spread along numerous rivulets and streams of the central plateau, would also do honor to any guru of oriental garden art.
The steep northern coast of the island is undoubtedly beautiful, but practically inaccessible from the shore. The only option to see it is to rent a boat, but on the day of our visit this was, alas, impossible due to a storm...
Luxurious West Coast Flores is said to reach its aesthetic climax on the ancient path that leads along the cliff from Ponta da Faga to Ponta Delgada. The beginning of the trail is truly gorgeous!
It's worth looking back at tiny village Fajã Grande, and your heart skips a beat from the beauty! The piercing blue of the ocean and the white church against the backdrop of steep green cliffs with waterfalls and terraced fields - what is not a heavenly landscape?!
The middle of the trail is quite difficult, but after 300 meters of elevation gain, a bonus awaits the traveler in the form of a waterfall, the westernmost in Europe! Rising from the basalt plateau, he covers the rest of the short path to the ocean in several vigorous leaps...
And here is the westernmost piece of the European Land - Monchique! A small sheer cliff looms in the ocean just opposite the waterfall - and this is the last piece of land on this side of the Atlantic. Further west - only the Bahamas, Bermuda, Newfoundland...
At the end of the ten-kilometer trail, the patient and hardy will see a view of the westernmost lighthouse in Europe, located on a cape not far from Ponta Delgada - Farol De Albarnaz. The impatient and lazy can cheat and get to the lighthouse by car, taking a detour... We cheated!
On the western shore lies the local ecotourism kingdom of Fajãzinha.
Scattered among a mosaic of green fields and laurel copses, Fajazinha and its neighbor Faga Grande compete with each other for the title of the most westerly settlement in Europe. It’s difficult for me to judge them, but the western border of Europe definitely made the most favorable impression on me!
No matter how beautiful the west of Flores is, I still give the palm to the southwest of this blessed island... It is there that man-made landscapes organically merge with natural beauty basalt rocks and the endless grandeur of the Ocean!
As it cools, molten basalt can become covered with such a regular network of cracks that it turns into a bunch of identical hexagonal columns of very considerable length. However, this rarely happens; a unique set of conditions is needed, and the islanders are rightfully proud of their landmark!
It was these pastures on the hillsides that became for me personally a symbol of the Azores - a cow paradise, where traces of 600 years of human activity fit surprisingly harmoniously into natural landscape, creating one of the most beautiful man-made landscapes I have ever seen!
Description and location
Flores Island is part of the western group of the Azores archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. Administratively, the island is divided into two municipalities: Lajes das Flores in the south and Santa Cruz das Flores in the north. The island was discovered in 1450 by Diogo de Teive and his son João. It was originally called St. Thomas Island. The first settlers on the island were the family of the Flemish aristocrat Willem van der Hagen between 1480 and 1490. Since 1510, the Portuguese from the northern provinces began to settle on the island.
In July 1962, France set up a missile test site on the island. The island's infrastructure improved, and a hospital and airport were built.
In 1994, the French left the island, and tourists began to actively visit it.
Nature
Flores is famous for its volcanic lakes located in the craters of volcanoes. Most They are often shrouded in fog, so the best time to visit them is spring. The most picturesque of the lakes is Funda, with many small shallows and shores framed by unusually beautiful vegetation, thanks to which it is considered the most beautiful.
Particularly noteworthy are the Baroque mansions and churches, as well as the Ribeira Grand waterfall.
Pastures, farms and vineyards make up the island's extraordinary landscape.
Climate
Nautical. average temperature air temperature in January is +15°C, in July +22°C. In summer it is hot, but not stuffy. From September to April it often rains and there may be fogs.
Sea and beaches
Favorable period for swimming. From May to September, the water temperature ranges from +20°C to +23°C.”
Corals Soft corals grow underwater
The underwater world is rich, rich in various rare species of marine life. You can watch whales and dolphins.
Lakes
Lake Funda, with its shores framed by dense vegetation, is the most beautiful of the seven lakes located in the catarrhs of extinct volcanoes.
Ocean
Water temperature in summer is 21-23°C, in winter 17-20°C
Flora and fauna
Aquatic life: dolphins, whales, rare species jellyfish
Vegetation
The most common plants on the island are cedar, English holly, cherry, mahogany, and laurel.
Interesting places:
Shops, souvenir shops. Shops are mostly open on weekdays, some until lunchtime on Saturday.
Nutrition
Local cuisine Numerous fish and seafood dishes. The cuisine is based on Portuguese, but there are a number of local dishes.
Entertainment- museums Ethnographic Museum
The resort is aimed at adults
The temperature, even at night in winter, never drops below +13°C, so you won’t need warm clothes.
Behavior rules
It is not customary to yawn or sip in public places.
Tips
Tips are informal, but if you are satisfied with the service, you can leave 10% of the bill.
Resort specifics: exotic.
Flores Island, one of the most famous resorts world, is very popular among tourists. Various types of recreation and excursion programs one of the main components of modern relaxation. Like most resorts in the world, Flores Island can provide different levels of relaxation at a variety of prices. This resort has both luxury hotels and budget hotels.
If you are tormented by the question “Where to relax?”, “Where to spend your vacation?” Then perhaps Flourish Island will be perfect place for relax.
The rise was early and was accompanied by three observations. Firstly, our shoulders and back ached, secondly, it had stopped raining outside, and thirdly, we were alone in the entire hotel, which meant that the promised breakfast had passed by. Of course, the main thing was point two - the absence of rain, the shoulders were adjusted with a photo backpack perched on them, and we had learned where to have coffee and a bun the day before.
Having taken a walk around the city to the bakery and back, we did not attract much attention local residents, as it was the day before, they took the fruits they had bought the day before from their room and, plunging into the car, set out “towards adventure.”
Green Island
Flores was discovered by the Portuguese in the middle of the 15th century and called the “island of flowers,” however, despite such a romantic name, it was more or less possible to populate it only a century later. The first attempt to do this, made by the Flemish William van der Hagen, ended in failure and in 1480 he fled from Flores to São Jorge. Apparently, the first pancake determined the shape of all subsequent ones and, despite the fact that in the best times, when whaling flourished on the island, the population reached ten thousand inhabitants, now it has returned almost to its original values and does not exceed 4,000 people.
Apart from catching and processing whales, the inhabitants of Flores almost never engaged in commerce, living on self-sufficiency and, in extreme cases, exchanging spare parts for their ships with pirates and corsairs for water and food. In this state they would happily exist to this day, given that whaling was banned and the population began to rapidly decline as a result of emigration, if not for the French army.
In the second half of the 20th century, the French adapted Flores as a testing ground for ammunition, as a result of which infrastructure began to rapidly develop on the island, paved roads and an airport appeared. In the end, the French also left, UNESCO made the island a biosphere reserve, but the airport remained and tourists appeared on Flores, becoming a new source of income for local residents.
Lajes
Despite the fact that the rain had stopped, the clouds were not going to disperse anywhere and continued to hang over the island like a thick gray blanket. Having climbed to a height of six hundred meters, we found ourselves in the central part of the island - here the clouds became closer, and sometimes completely dropped to the ground, turning into fog.
Since with north coast We managed to get to know the islands the day before; now we were heading south - to a town with the “beautiful, and most importantly rare” name Lajes. It was primarily the commercial port of Flores - you can imagine what an active life there was, considering that the inhabitants of the island provided for themselves. In addition to the “sleepy” port in Lajes there was a church, a small park, a bridge, a waterfall, a souvenir shop, two or three dozen houses, several guns, one cat and, besides us, two American tourists: one fat and one thin. Having photographed all this, we moved on.
End of the world
Undoubtedly, the main attractions of Flores were not Lajes, not Ponta Delgada and not Santa Cruz - the cities on the island performed a very specific function: to eat and spend the night. To enjoy nature in Flores, the first such natural attraction was the western coast of the island, often called by the name of the town located there, Faja Grande.
This place had several features. The first was directly related to the terrain: the central part of the island here abruptly drops from the same six hundred meters that I wrote about at the beginning, to a hundred or less. But the cliff does not immediately go into the sea, forming a giant step in front of the shore. Moreover, the rivers flowing from the center of the island, the largest of which is called Ribeira Grande, have no choice but to fall down from the cliff, cutting the “step” with a dozen waterfalls.
The second feature is purely geographical. Fajan Grande is considered the westernmost point of the European continent. To be completely precise, the westernmost point is the island of Monchique (Ilheu do Monchique), located another 700 meters to the west, and Fajan Grande is the westernmost locality, since no one lives on the island.
However, following the phrase: “you can’t be 100% sure of anything,” you can argue with this statement. The point is that at the point Atlantic Ocean, located somewhere between Faial and Flores, as many as three lithospheric plates converge: European, African and North American. It turns out that the western group of islands, to which Flores and Corvo belong, is located on the North American plate and the statement that Fajan Grande refers to the European continent is not entirely correct.
By the way, there is still no consensus on which plate the islands of the central and eastern groups are located on; the presence of the Azores microplate, sandwiched between the Eurasian and African ones, cannot be ruled out.
Seven lakes
Having already visited the third “edge of the world”, after Cape Finisterra in Spain and Cape Roca in Portugal, we took a moment to drink a cup of coffee and moved back to the center of the island and its natural feature, or rather, seven lakes that filled former volcanic craters.
So here are their names: Lomba, Funda, Rasa, Seca, Negra, Comprida and Branca. Previously, there was confusion and two lakes bore the name Funda, they were distinguished as Funda Lajes and Funda Cedros, until the second was renamed Negra. Lagoa Negra is the deepest of them all (105 meters).
Portugal, Azores, Flores, Azores, Portugal
Show on the mapFlorish is a real miracle of nature. The island greets its guests with pristine natural beauty, panoramic views of valleys and friendly villages, peaceful calm and silence, which is interrupted only by the majestic voice of the ocean. Flores is rightly called the island of flowers: lush hydrangeas, hibiscus, azorine, juniper, cacti and heather grow here everywhere, turning this place into a strange and fragrant garden.
Flourish is the most western territory Azores and Europe. Endowed with its truly paradisiacal landscapes, the island is included in international network biosphere reserves UNESCO. Since the island is small, it is easy to get around on foot. Taking walks along various routes along the island, you can watch various types migratory birds, because the island of Flores is considered one of the best places in the Azores for observing unique species of birds. The most suitable time for this type of holiday is from September to November, and the best area is the “White Lagoon” (Lagoa Branca) in the central part of the island.
How to get to Flores
Flores is located in the western Atlantic Ocean and belongs to the group of islands of the Azores archipelago. You can get to Flores in 2-2.5 hours. WITH neighboring islands, including with nearby, there is air and ferry service. The flight time from Corvo is 15 minutes, and the ferry journey will take 40 minutes. In addition to taxi and car rental services, there is a network of public transport with various routes to anywhere on the island.
Climate on Florisch
The weather on the island is changeable throughout the day clear sky rain clouds may appear. The best time visiting period is from May to September, when the temperature fluctuates between +24-26 °C. The water temperature throughout the year ranges from +17 to +23°C. The period from June to September is comfortable for relaxing on the beach, when the waters of the Atlantic become warmer.
Entertainment in Floris
The island of Flores is famous for its 7 lakes located in craters extinct volcanoes. Considered the most picturesque Deep lake(Lagoa Funda), its banks are buried in emerald greenery, forming a magical landscape. The group of rocks of Rocha dos Bordoes are business card islands. Unusual basalt fossils resemble a giant organ in their outline. From here you have an amazing view of the picturesque area of Fajã Grande and the Ribeira Grande waterfall, which falls in a beautiful cascade from a height of 300 meters. Alagoa Bay offers excellent diving from a group of islets and peninsulas, especially around the reefs of Baixa do Amigo, Ponta da Caveira and Ilhéu do Garajau. For the best observation decks and panoramic photographs, it is worth going to the heights of Floris - the peaks of Sete Pes, Burrinha, Marcel and high point Morro Alto (915 m).
Beaches of Floris
In Flores you can relax on the beaches with natural pools in Santa Cruz and Lajes. If you want something more unusual, then it is better to opt for reservoirs formed by waterfalls. The famous Ribeira Grande waterfall or the Poço do Bacalhau waterfall, with a drop height of 90 meters, are perfect for this purpose.
Sights of Florisch
The most notable architectural buildings on Florisch are the ancient mansions and churches. The most famous are the church of Nossa Senhora do Rosário and the chapel Nossa Senhora das Angústias in Lajes das Flores, the churches of Nossa Senhora da Conceição and São Boaventura in Santa Cruz das Flores, the capital of the island. Also of interest will be the Ethnographic Museum (Museu Etnográfico), where you can get acquainted with the life of the islanders and see the products of local craftsmen. The hot sulfur springs of Aguas Quentes and the huge 50-meter cave Groto de Enxareus are also interesting to visit.