A Small Guide to Pico Island

Ilha do Pico / Azores · Visited and curated by André

Please find my list of recommendations for a beautiful time in Pico Island below.

Eat

O Ancoradouro Areia Larga

GO ’26
Traditional Azorean cooking on a terrace over the little harbour at Areia Larga, the sun going down behind Faial; fish stews, grilled lapas, and cracas, the volcano-shelled barnacles you dig out with a pin.

Drink

Cella Bar Madalena

GO ’26
Azorean wine and cheese inside an award-winning “giant wine barrel” on the Madalena waterfront, all curved staves and whale-belly ribs (FCC Arquitectura, raised over an old wine store); come for the sunset across the channel to Faial.

Look

Whale watching Lajes do Pico

GO ’26
Out of Lajes do Pico, the old whaling town; vigias still scan the sea from clifftop lookouts and radio the boats where to steer, the same eyes that once hunted sperm whales now finding them for you.

Lajido da Criação Velha Criação Velha

GO ’26 ◎
The Landscape of the Pico Island Vineyard Culture, UNESCO-listed since 2004; a black lava plain gridded with thousands of currais, drystone walls built to shelter Verdelho vines from the wind and salt, with a red windmill down on the shore.

Around the island the coast road

GO ’26
Circle the island slowly for its nature: lava coast and tide pools, black-walled vineyards, and laurel forest and crater lakes on the plateau inland, the cone of Pico watching over all of it.

Walk

Montanha do Pico the summit

GO ’26 ◎
The volcano that is the whole island and the highest ground in Portugal, 2,351 m; a guided up-and-down that is harder and longer than it looks, and worth every metre for the crater rim, the little steaming peak of Piquinho, and the islands laid out below.

Beyond

Faial across the channel

GO ’26
The thirty-minute ferry to Faial, and the reason to take it: from Horta and the caldera the whole cone of Pico stands clear across the water, the view you can’t get from home.

São Jorge the Triângulo

GO ’26 ◌
The third island of the Triângulo, a long green ridge of fajãs and famous cheese; marked, and waiting for a first crossing.