One moment…
The Azores, Portugal
Islands of Fire and Fern
Eight days across two Azorean islands — crater-rim walks, lunch cooked by the volcano, and time at sea with the biologists who know these whales by name.
8 daysMax 10 travelersMay – OctoberFrom £3,120 per person
IslandOceanVolcanic
The Azores reward travelers who stay longer than a stopover, so this journey takes its time across two islands. São Miguel gives us calderas, thermal valleys, and tea plantations; Faial gives us the caldera crossing, the painted harbour of Horta, and the deep water offshore where sperm whales live year-round.
The heart of the week is our partnership with a marine research team in Horta — two days on the water not as sightseers but alongside working biologists, learning how a whaling archipelago became one of the Atlantic’s great conservation stories.
Day by day
The shape of the week
Itineraries are a promise of rhythm, not a timetable. Weather, harvests, and good conversations are allowed to rearrange the day.
Days 1–2
São Miguel: Sete Cidades
Arrive into Ponta Delgada and head west to the twin crater lakes of Sete Cidades. A full day walking the rim path, with a picnic above the green-and-blue lakes and a first swim at a thermal pool on the way home.
Day 3
Furnas, cooked by the earth
Into the steaming valley of Furnas. Our hosts bury the cozido pot in volcanic ground at dawn; we walk the caldera and botanical gardens until it emerges, six hours later, for lunch. Afternoon soak in the iron-warm pools of Poça da Beija.
Day 4
Tea, then the crossing
Morning at Europe’s oldest tea plantation on the north coast, then the short flight to Faial and an evening walk through Horta’s marina, where five centuries of Atlantic sailors have painted their arrival on the harbour wall.
Days 5–6
To sea with the researchers
Two days with the marine biology team: mornings on the water among sperm whales and dolphins, afternoons in the field station learning photo-identification — several of these whale families have been tracked here for over thirty years.
Day 7
Faial’s caldera and the new land
Walk Faial’s two-kilometre-wide caldera rim in the morning cloud forest, then west to Capelinhos, where a 1957 eruption added a raw new cape to the island — a landscape still learning to be land.
Day 8
Horta, slowly, then home
A last unhurried morning — coffee at a harbourside café overlooking Horta's painted marina wall, the way generations of Atlantic sailors have — then flights home via Ponta Delgada.
Your guide
Mariana Duarte
Mariana comes from three generations of Douro winemakers and guided walking journeys across Iberia for eight years before joining Verdara. She knows which quinta kitchens bake on which mornings, and plans her valley walks around them. In the Azores she works alongside the Horta research team she first volunteered with as a student.
Pinhão, Portugal
Traveler stories
From people who walked it
“Two days with the whale researchers — extraordinary”
I booked for the volcanoes and came home talking about the biologists. Being on the water with people who know individual whales by the notches on their flukes is a different order of experience from any whale-watching trip I’ve done. The cozido lunch was ridiculous in the best way. Eight days felt short.
Marcus Whitfield
Toronto, Canada
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Questions about Islands of Fire and Fern?
Dates, fitness, rooms, dietary needs, whether the swim is really optional — ask us anything. A person answers, not an autoresponder.