Spain and Portugal for Visitors

Likeable, slightly sloppy guide to the Azores from a web development outfit, I think. Information about each island, including its history, transport, communications, places to visit, culture and entertainment, traditional festivals, sights, food and drink, seaside resorts, wale watching (sic), fishing, diving and underwater fishing, hunting, hiking and walking.

An introduction to the archipelago from Portugal.org. These are old pages, so you would do better to go to Visit Azores, listed elsewhere on this page, or Portugal.org itself.

The "Practical Site of Azores," offering "guidance, information and travel reservation services for the destination Azores," which sounds a lot more commercial than the site really is. In fact, it contains a large amount of splendidly presented information on each of the islands, their geography, history, culture, landscape and festivals, though much of the content is taken from Pierre Sousa Lima's site listed below.

Likeable, informative, entertaining and generally first-rate guide to the Azores.

The volcanic orgins of the Azores mean they are riddled with caves, nearly 250 of them, "onde se escondem muitos segredos e estranhas formas de vida, where many strange, secret lifeforms hide" (I think they mean this to be intriguing, but it sounds perfectly terrifying to me). The link goes to the Portuguese-only website of Gespea, a learned society dedicated to the investigation of speleological things in the Azores, but contains a certain amount of information - a lot, if you dig around long enough - about the caves open to the public. These are the Algar do Carvão, the Gruta do Natal and the Furna d'Água on Terceira Island, Caldeira da Graciosa and the world-heritage protected Furna do Enxofre on Graciosa, the Gruta do Carvão on São Miguel, and the Gruta das Torres on Pico Island.

From Pierre Sousa Lima's Motopage, as this Azoran motorcycle enthusiast refers to his splendid website. The islands, their geography, history and nature, as well as eminently practical (not to say essential, given then nature of islands) matters like boats and planes.

From the same web development outfit that makes "Visit-Azores," Trails-Azores gives you just that, hiking trails on the different islands, with GPS routes.

This website from the regional tourism consortium has down-sized, though it is still nicely designed, informative and entertaining. So it is no longer a one-stop source for all-things-Azores, but has gained in other ways. Its English, for example, has greatly improved and, although it is still a bit wobbly in parts, the following no longer applies: Unfortunately but amusingly, its English is execrable. It starts well, saying "For those who love nature, The Azores are heaven on earth," begins to struggle, e.g., "São Miguel has a lot to sea," and finally degenerates to levels of unintelligiblity rarely found even on the Internet: "In the center of the island of S. Miguel, I descend for a soft carpet until an amazingly white sand beach, an enormous crater, tipped for the deep sea of blue at north and south brightness, hides the long and oval Fire Lagoon.

Not the official tourist information site listed elsewhere on this page, though evidently the name has been chosen to cause confusion. This "Visit-Azores" has been made (well made) by a web development outfit, and is informative and entertaining. Azores holiday packages, lodgings, restaurants, transport, places to visit, history, flora and fauna, what's on, gastronomy, etc. Its strong point is the most important holiday activities available in the Azores: hiking / walking / trails, whale watching, diving, fishing, boat trips, bird watching, caving/speleology, "radical sports" (rappel, canyoning, cascading, slide).