CALDEIRA DO INFERNO

COSTA DE CASTELO BRANCO

Zona Balnear e de Lazer

Esta freguesia possui tal como outras, "piscinas" talhadas pela Natureza. Aproveitadas por crianças e adultos para os banhos de Verão.

Recentemente a autarquia local, procedeu a algumas obras e criou uma piscina mais apropriada para a "pequenada".

Uma iniciativa de louvar.

Iniciativas que abrangeram também, um Parque de Campismo e grandes melhoramentos no antigo Parque Infantil.

Castelo Branco, possui também um pequeno porto, destinado a pescadores locais e a embarcações de recreio.

Tudo isto com um dos símbolos da freguesia, sempre em destaque no horizonte.

Morro de Castelo Branco

BATERIA DE COSTA DA ESPALAMACA

Uma das posições fortificadas da cidade da Horta, com um complexo constituído por um túnel subterrâneo, edifícios de apoio, paióis, dois espaldões para peças de artilharia de costa e dois postos de vigia. Foi construída em 1941 e desmantelada nos anos setenta.

Tinha como "missão", a defesa do canal Faial/Pico e a defesa do porto da Horta.

Hoje, podemos desfrutar de uma vista fabulosa sobre a cidade da Horta, e sobre as outras duas Ilhas do Triângulo, Pico e São Jorge. Em dias de boa visibilidade, também avistamos a Ilha Graciosa.

Observatório Príncipe Alberto do Mónaco

Situado no Monte das Moças, tem uma vista privilegiada sobre a baía da Horta, baía de Porto Pim e freguesia das Angústias. Foram as expedições que o Príncipe Alberto do Mónaco realizou nos Açores, que estiveram na sua origem, tendo ficado concluído em 1915.

As suas observações foram transmitidas para quase todos os Continentes, através do cabo telegráfico submarino.

Em 1923 recebeu o nome, pelo qual é conhecido ainda hoje, em homenagem ao Príncipe.

Actualmente, está a necessitar de algumas obras de conservação...

The Daily Telegraph - 2

OUTRAS REPORTAGENS:

Aqui ficam os excertos sobre o Faial:

"The channel between Madalena and Horta, the main town of Faial, is only four miles wide, and we scooted across in a quarter of an hour, past Horta's marina, the main stopping-off point for transatlantic sailors, its long breakwater daubed with paintings and drawings by transient yachtsmen. Outside the distant main island of São Miguel, Horta is the liveliest place in the Azores and Peter's Bar on the quayside is a jolly exchange and mart for the yachting fraternity who stagger around in that bow-legged way that owes more to conviviality than to the weeks at sea. The walls are festooned with sailing memorabilia, and a noticeboard serves as a job centre for the marooned or disaffected: "Anyone going to Cape Town? I'll cook, swab, even clean the heads!"; "Crew wanted for Rio . . . "

Faial is the most charmingly rustic of the central islands, rising gently through fields, meadows and villages, like those of northern Portugal, to its single volcanic crater.
The countryside is beribboned with hedges of blue hydrangea and, here and there, the fields run down to sandy beaches, something of a rarity in these rocky and cliff-bound islands. Given their position, the Azores are hardly ideal for a beach holiday, but the Gulf Stream ensures that the sea is never worse than bracing and, in summer, can reach 75F."

Robert Thicknesse in The Azores: Islands on the edge

"Thanks to the many sailing crews that call in while crossing the Atlantic, Faial's capital, Horta, is a lively, likeable place. The quayside is decorated with vivid murals, and the port's historic buildings, museums and churches evoke its rich maritime past. The best place to stay is the renovated Pousada de Santa Cruz , which occupies a 16th-century fort on the harbour. Abundant hydrangeas make Faial an exceptionally pretty island to tour around - for an astonishing contrast, head to Capelinhos in the far west, where you can gaze down at the apocalyptic results of a volcanic eruption in 1957."

Nigel Tisdall in The Azores: Europe begins here

"On the third day we fly to Horta on Faial, in the central group of the Azores. It takes about an hour to fly from São Miguel, and if anything, this smaller island seems even closer to perfection.

Living here is like being in love, says our guide; and I can see what he means. Known as the Blue Island for its hedgerows of hydrangeas, Faial offers a spectacular range of scenery over a very small area, with green valleys and pasture on one side, and the blasted, apocalyptic results of recent volcanic activity on the other. There is a lighthouse half-buried in volcanic ash; a stretch of desert like a Martian moon; and fabulous places to swim all around the island – though there are few beaches, the tumbling lava has formed wonderful natural swimming places, sheltered from the open sea, where Anouchka can spend hours diving, climbing on rocks and inspecting the sea life trapped in the many pools.

In the evening, the marina is the place to be. Nightlife is sociable rather than sophisticated, and there are a variety of restaurants and bars. Food in the Azores is best when it is simple. Hotel and restaurant food here can often have a kind of school-dinnerish quality, but cafés and bars often serve tasty and inexpensive food, and the Sport bar in Horta, on the sea-front, is the locals' favourite, offering seafood kebabs, excellent steaks, grilled wreckfish and salads, with good bread, local cheeses and Portuguese wines.
Pico is only a heartbeat away, and Horta's skyline is dominated by its perfect cone."

"Whale-watching is a unique experience, and we are told that Faial is the best place to try it. Our motorised boat seats only eight people, and the organisers are careful to ensure that the whales are not stressed by the presence of observers. More than one boat is not allowed, and we keep a distance at all times. I'm impressed by the care and sensitivity shown by our guides, and conscious of what a rare privilege it is to see these giant mammals in their natural habitat.

The marine life of the Azores is spectacularly varied; some 25 different species of whale visit the islands, and on our first trip we see sperm whales, beaked whales, pilot whales and dolphins."

Joanne Harris in Why I adore the Azores

Big surprises on the Azores

Uma reportagem do "The Daily Telegraph"

Na sua edição de 08/09/2007 o jornalista Nicholas Roe, fala da sua visita a três ilhas dos Açores, transcrevo abaixo o excerto sobre o Faial:


Faial

"I took a 25-minute ferry ride from Pico to nearby Faial. Short distance, big difference. This tiny, lush island (15 miles long) moves to a more international beat than Pico, thanks to two factors.

This is where communication cables between Europe and America were controlled at the start of the 20th century - a function that guaranteed foreign influence until the 1960s when satellite technology took over.

Next came the yachties.There is a large and jolly marina in the main town of Horta, that caters in a relaxed fashion to trans-Atlantic sailors desperate for a drink after weeks at sea. The tradition is that visiting crews paint pictures on the harbourside before setting off again, and thousands splatter the front. This is also where you find Peter's Café Sport, internationally famous as a yachties' meeting-point: a homely enough place with dodgy service but a sense of cosmopolitan bustle and a musuem of scrimshaw - handicrafts produced by sailors in their spare time - upstairs.

But the real surprise lies beyond Horta or the dozen quiet villages that dot the island's coastal rim. Wildflowers and hydrangeas are gorgeously noticeable elsewhere, but here they smack you right in the eye. Whole field systems are divided by the shrubs, adding a beautiful blue perspective to the rolling views.

Faial is also the island that suffered the most recent major volcanic eruption, 50 years ago. At Capelinhos on the west coast you can still see house roofs jutting out from banked-up soil. Almost a square mile of new land rears starkly from the sea, the result of that lava-spewing upthrust. At low tide, the water boils.

Here, I met a returning Azorean who described scrambling up the volcano as a naughty boy shortly after it had "stopped" erupting. Except that it hadn't. A fresh explosion sent him scuttling home in terror, after which his family left for America, only now returning.

This is just the kind of off-beat surprise you can expect to find on the Azores: a local bystander happy to tell you all about his boyhood encounter with a live volcano."

Aqui fica o link, pois fala também sobre as ilhas de São Miguel e do Pico:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/main.jhtml?xml=/travel/2007/09/08/et-azores-108.xml&page=1

27/09/2007 - 50 Anos Depois...

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  "Viver nas ilhas Açorianas é uma estranha forma de vida - é ter sempre o credo na boca. Porque é o mar que se revolta, os vulcões que acordam, a lama que arrasta, a terra que treme... Seria exagero dizer que esse é o dia-a-dia dos Açorianos, claro que não é, mas escolher aquele arquipélago para lugar das nossas vidas é a certeza de que, em algum momento, se conhecerão tragédias que moram ao lado ou nos batem à porta. E, no entanto, há Açorianos a viver nos Açores."

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  "Há Açorianos a viver nos Açores e só não o entende quem não conhece os pedaços de terra mais belos de Portugal. Os Açorianos não se cruzam com a Natureza nos manuais de ecologia: conhecem-na de olhar à volta, conhecem-lhe as iras terríveis, mas dádivas também."

• 
  
  "Nós por cá façamos o que temos de fazer: ajudá-los nestes dias terríveis - em paga da sorte que temos por chamarmos de compatriotas gente que é tão, vou usar a palavra certa, natural. E dizer-lhes o que devemos dizer - isto é, obrigado! - por eles aguentarem o lado mau de uma terra que nós, turistas e continentais, só conhecemos na sua forma esplendorosa."

excertos de um texto de Ferreira Moreno, no Jornal "24 Horas", por altura do sismo de 1998.