Volcano Tours in the Azores, Portugal

The Azores are nine islands standing on the seam where three tectonic plates meet. The North American, the Eurasian and the Nubian plates all reach the same point in the middle of the Atlantic, and the archipelago is what that junction built. It sits about 1,400 kilometres west of Lisbon. Every island is a volcano, or several stacked on top of one another, and the highest of them is also the highest ground in Portugal: Mount Pico, 2,351 metres, which is the top of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge with the sea taken away. This page covers the islands where that geology is actually sold to visitors, and says which ones are not.

What this page cannot give you is a single Azorean day, because the three areas do not resemble each other. São Miguel is a driving island with two crater complexes and a valley that steams; you sleep in Ponta Delgada and nothing is more than ninety minutes away. Pico and Faial are a pair separated by seven kilometres of water, and the reason to go is a 2,351-metre climb with a permit system attached to it. Terceira sells the inside of a volcano rather than the outside. Choosing wrong costs more here than it does in most countries, because the link between the islands is a turboprop that fog can cancel.