Furnas Valley

In the village of Furnas, on São Miguel, the earth is still cooking. Steam rises from holes in the ground beside the street, hot springs feed iron-coloured pools, and in the middle of it all the famous cozido stew is buried in volcanic soil each morning to be lifted, steaming, at noon. This is one of the great geothermal landscapes of the Atlantic.

The valley where the volcano breathes

Furnas sits inside the crater of a volcano that has been building itself for some eight hundred thousand years; its caldera, eight kilometres across, shelters more than thirty mineral springs, each with its own character. Thermal bathing has been a ritual here for centuries — at the Parque Terra Nostra, whose two-hundred-year-old garden surrounds a warm, iron-rich pool, and at the more intimate Poça da Dona Beija. At the lake, the Lagoa das Furnas page explores the caldeiras on its shore, while the island’s capital, Ponta Delgada, is an hour away by road.

What to see

• The village caldeiras, steaming beside the houses
• The Cozido das Furnas, lifted from the ground at midday
• Terra Nostra’s garden and thermal pool
• Poça da Dona Beija’s natural hot pools
• The fumaroles and caldeiras on the shore of Lagoa das Furnas

Practical information

Furnas lies in the municipality of Povoação, about 45 minutes from Ponta Delgada. Book the cozido lunch in advance in high season, and come with more time than you think: the village, the lake and two thermal parks can fill a slow, warm and memorable day.

Image credit: Furnas by E-W — CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.