Graciosa Island
The Graceful Island...
The Graciosa island, with 61 km2 and 4,390 inhabitants, is of all the islands of the Azores less mountainous and humid. “White Island” they called it, to what it is known to know due to the abundance of traquito, the rock that the distant one has given the impression of being white in the eyes of our first settlers. Hence the toponymy of the island: White Barro, White Rocks, Serra Branca.
This island seduces the visitor by its landscape made of flat, rounded hills covered with trees, vineyards between black stone walls, fields of cultivation and the constant presence of the sea. The concept of untouched Nature applies here to a thousand wonders. Owning one of the richest ecosystems in the world, Graciosa is, since 2007, a Biosphere Reserve declared by UNESCO.
If you want to travel to the center of the earth, do not stop by Jules Verne and visit the disturbing beauty of Furna do Enxofre, a rare and geologically unique volcanology phenomenon in the world. It is a depression existing in the basement of the Caldera - crater of an ancient volcano - where there is a phenomenon of liberation of sulfurous gases from a fluid mass in permanent boiling located in the innermost recess of the cave. It communicates with the exterior through two openings, and b in 1939, in the largest of them, was built by a simple master mason, under the guidance of Lieutenant Manuel Severo dos Reis, an imposing staircase (in a snail) of access, in masonry equipped , Now singled out as a happy example in terms of environmental engineering. For a long time, and before its construction, who wanted to know Furna had to descend tied by the waist. The naturalist Fouqué in 1873 and Prince Albert of Monaco, from 1879, were the first to study Furna, drawing the attention of the international scientific community to their interest and originality.
