By Buggy to the Sete Cidades Crater and the Abandoned Hotel

The volcano at Sete Cidades is 36,000 years old, and this is half a day spent on the tracks around its crater, in a buggy or on a quad. The vehicles are the point. The roads up on the rim were not made for cars, so what a 4x4 reaches is a different set of viewpoints from the ones on the coach route. Pico do Carvão comes first, with the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. Then the off-road tracks around the crater itself, between the lagoons, stopping where it is worth stopping. The Miradouro das Cumeeiras looks straight down onto the lakes. Across the crater at the Vista do Rei there is the view everyone photographs, and beside it the abandoned Hotel das Sete Cidades, left standing empty. The route finishes through the Pinhal da Paz forest reserve, in the middle of the cattle country. The meeting point in Ponta Delgada is the motorcycle shop.