We rekindled our passion for hiking among the volcanic peaks of Portugal’s Azores | Canada Voices

We were about three-quarters of the way up to Lagoa do Fogo – a crater lake on São Miguel Island in Portugal’s Azores – when the seagulls began to alight on the rocky knolls lining the path. Their shrill calls pierced the stillness of the narrow, serpentine valley, large yellow beaks popping against scrubby green hills.

The trailhead sign had warned these outsized gulls can be territorial, giving our final ascent to the “Lake of Fire” the vibe of an ambush scene in a classic Hollywood western – not something my wife Lisa and I had anticipated when planning our trip to this volcano-born archipelago roughly 1,400 kilometres off the coast of mainland Portugal. But our hiking holiday last November was equal parts dreamy and surprising, because no matter what route we chose, a new thrill seemed to emerge around every corner.

The trip – our first big one without the kids in years – was an opportunity to rekindle a shared passion: hiking.

Lisa and I walked a lot with our girls as they grew up, but family treks became compromises about distance and difficulty. Now we were free to go as far – and as high – as we wanted.

São Miguel offered everything we craved for an active vacation: a world-class network of mountain and coastal trails, a distinctive 500-year-old culture tied to land and sea, a subtropical climate that stays mild after peak season. We landed in the rain, but it was sporadic over the next 10 days and the temperature rarely dipped below 15 degrees.

Our first discovery on São Miguel did not involve hiking. Instead, we stumbled upon a three-step cure for jet lag.

First, a strong espresso and a fluffy Portuguese roll stuffed with “cheese of the island” (although we never learned which of the many Azorean cheeses it was, one of the challenges of visiting an uncommonly self-sufficient archipelago bountiful with dairy cows and fertile volcanic soil).

Second, a soak in the Caldeira Velha hot springs, an oasis tucked into a notch in the mountains above our oceanside rental in the town of Vila Franca do Campo.

Third, an IPA inside the clear, Plexiglas dome at the Azores Brewing Company, a few minutes down the road.

Sufficiently relaxed and rested, we were ready to start walking the next morning. The trail we picked, Janela do Inferno (“Window to Hell”), was a 15-minute drive from our apartment. Ominous placenames notwithstanding, proximity to just about every possible destination is one of the bonuses of being on an island that’s approximately 65 kilometres long.

It was supposed to be a chill warm-up excursion, but quickly turned adventurous. After huffing up a steep dirt track through lush cow pastures, we encountered a concrete staircase dropping into a heavily treed cleft. Then we passed through a series of dark tunnels – the longest more than 70 metres – once used to supply water to a coastal distillery. And then we carefully walked across several mossy aqueducts, part of the same 19th-century diversion system.

There wasn’t much risk of slipping and falling, and we enjoyed experiencing features that we typically don’t traverse during a walk in the woods at home.

The “Window to Hell” turned out to be a waterfall pouring out of a cave in a cliff. It looked more heavenly than satanic, although I don’t know what kind of spirits were distilled from the spring-fed flow.

After gorging on seafood, cheese and pastries for two days, we were fuelled up for São Miguel’s signature hike. Sete Cidades, near the island’s western tip and a 45-minute drive from Vila Franca do Campo, is a town that sits beside twin lakes inside a near-perfect volcanic crater. The ridgetop walk around its rim is a 21-kilometre loop of postcard views: the sea way down below to our left, lakes and farm fields to our right, and so many shades of green.

To capitalize on this vista, a group of international developers built an enormous luxury hotel overlooking the crater. Without, it turns out, much of a business plan. The Monte Palace opened in 1989 and closed 18 months later. Now, the graffiti-covered edifice is a popular attraction. Signs warn of multiple dangers and prohibit entry, but a nearby food truck vendor pointed us to an entrance. Inside, sunlight filtered through holes in the roof into a once-grand five-storey atrium, and the balconies provided stunning views over the Sete Cidades caldera.

Dissonance between rules and reality seems to be the norm in São Miguel. At a bar we popped into that night, posters forbade drinking outside, but when I asked the bartender if it was okay, he said “of course,” and we joined a dozen other patrons sipping beer on the steps of the church across the street.

After Sete Cidades, I worried the rest of our hikes would be a letdown, but the aforementioned climb to Lagoa do Fogo – which was our third trail of the trip – proved just as memorable. Walking up a precipitous lane, we passed a panoramic ecolodge under construction rising from the ruins of a textile factory (a more manageable scale than the Monte Palace) and entered a fairy-tale forest of red-barked Japanese cedar. The single-track path was edged by a kilometres-long irrigation channel, with fish darting about in the crystal-clear water and trees reflecting off its mirror-smooth surface.

This led us to the valley of the gulls, which mercifully did not attack, and the hike’s eponymous aquamarine crater lake, encircled by a ridge of verdant curtain-fold mountains. More Jurassic Park than John Wayne, we decided. No wonder São Miguel is called “the green island.”

Two days later, we drove east to hike up to another divine waterfall. This time, instead of cows, chickens joined us on the footpath, and the route passed through the lost village of Sanguinho. Four hundred people used to live in the stone houses flanking the trail, affluent families who moved into the hills to escape flooding at the base of the valley.

Sanguinho was abandoned in the 1950s because of its isolation. Today, a handful of the houses have been transformed into rentals and there’s a café where we bought cold drinks and sat in the terraced garden, watching clouds and sunlight dance above the sea.

IF YOU GO

São Miguel is the largest island in the Azores; Ponta Delgada is its main city. Azores Airlines and TAP Air Portugal offer direct flights to Ponta Delgada from Toronto and Montreal. Air Canada and WestJet are adding direct seasonal flights from Toronto starting in June.

The official Visit Azores trails website (trails.visitazores.com/en) is indispensable with a searchable database of hikes. You can look up routes by distance and difficulty, and there are downloadable maps and leaflets for every trail. Trailhead signs offer more information, including elevation charts and local history. Other hiker-friendly amenities, such as public washrooms and drinking water, are plentiful.

São Miguel is in an active volcanic zone, so the island is dotted with thermal pools for your après hiking pleasure. Caldeira Velha and Poça da Dona Beija are in small jungled valleys where it costs a reasonable €10 or €12 respectively to soak in a series of pools. Ponta da Ferraria is a natural pool at the tip of an ocean inlet; it’s free but plan to visit at low tide when the waves are small, otherwise the water will be cooler and rougher.

We travelled in November, and wished we realized that the Gulf Stream moderates climate in the Azores, so we would have brought more shorts and less cold-weather clothing. We also should have left more space in our luggage for vacuum-packed cheeses from O Rei dos Queijos in Ponta Delgada, where you can sample and purchase one of the Azores’s top exports to bring home.