The Açores are a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic, on the same line of latitude as Lisbon. It is a sprawling group of islands, strung out on an east-west line about 1,500 kilometres from the Portuguese mainland, the most westerly, Flores, lying about 600 kilometres nearer North America, so their total area including water is immense, the EEZ (that's Exclusive Economic Zone) being over a million square kilometres in size.
Geography, Flora and Fauna. The Azores are volcanic in origin (and at least some of the volcanoes are still live, the last recorded eruption being in 1957) so their soil is fertile. And they have a temperate climate with very little seasonal variation, including moderately rainy weather. These two factors, fertile soil and rainfall, plus, most crucially, the archipelago's physical isolation from the rest of the world, mean the Azores are a botanist's paradise. Most of its original tree cover was cleared by settlers to make agricultural land, but of its eight hundred and something plant species, around three hundred are native and up to sixty are endemic (reforestation, though with non-native trees, has considerably increased the amount of woodland on the islands in recent years, as well). Its birdlife is also of interest, in spite of David Sayers' affirmation that "the Azores are one of the least attractive birdwatching destinations in terms of numbers of birds that might be seen and the cost per bird seen." In general, though, the stars of the Azores in terms of fauna are aquatic, particularly its cetaceans, and whale watching and dolphin-swimming-with are thriving activity holiday attractions.
History. Santa María and São Miguel were the first islands in the Azores to be discovered in 1427, during the reign of Henry the Navigator, probably by Gonçalo Velho. Unlike the Canary Islands, they were uninhabited, so their colonization, from 1439 onwards, did not entail enslavement, massacre or other forms of oppression (at least until 1583, when Philip II of Spain, then king of Portugal as well, decided to clear the islands of the French traders who had settled there). Although the islands' strategic position put them geographically on the scene of numerous naval conflicts, these did not generally affect the islands directly, and their only real appearances on the stage of world events were on the whole fleeting.
Tourism. In decreasing order of size, the nine inhabited islands of the Azores are São Miguel, Pico, Terceira, São Jorge, Faial, Flores, Santa Maria, Graciosa and Corvo. Except for Corvo, which only has private rooms and a small campsite to offer in terms of accommodation, they are all international tourist destinations, particularly popular among Scandinavians and Germans.