Faial Costa a Costa

The Faial Costa a Costa does exactly what its name promises: it crosses the island from one end to the other, from the east coast to the west coast. The starting point is the parish of Ribeirinha, at the far east and the oldest area of Faial. This is where the first piece of land on the island emerged, raised by eruptions from the ancient Ribeirinha volcano, approximately 800,000 years old, which gave its name to the volcanic complex in the same area. Along the way are volcanic cones, craters, furnas and caves, clearly visible marks of the Azores’ volcanic landscape.

Much of the trail follows, on the surface, one of the major transverse faults of the great submarine mountain range that runs west of Faial: the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. It is a true scar across the Atlantic, opened by the last major continental separation and the oceanic expansion that began 300 million years ago, along which volcanoes were born and islands formed on the surface.

The trail climbs to 1,000 metres along paths from bygone times and reaches the Caldeira do Faial, the crater of a dormant volcano with a 2 km diameter and 400 metres depth, formed approximately 500,000 years ago. Its successive eruptive phases raised the central area of the island, the so-called Cedros volcanic complex. Covered by lush Laurissilva vegetation, the Caldeira gradually collapsed during eruptions, the most recent occurring just 1,200 years ago, which covered 70% of the island with pumice stone.

After the lush landscapes of the interior, the scenery changes completely at the end: you arrive at the authentic lunar desert of Vulcão dos Capelinhos, often called the “last volcano in the line”. It is the most recent of a fissural volcanism that aligns a series of cones, begun near the Caldeira approximately 15,000 years ago and ending precisely at Capelinhos, resulting from the 1957/58 eruption, which ejected 175,000,000 m³ of ash and formed the current Capelo volcanic complex, Europe’s most recent volcanic peninsula. This is where the trail ends.