Sete Cidades (Azores)

LakesAzores,Portugal

Two lakes side by side in one crater in Portugal's Azores, one mirror-blue and one deep green, with a rim path looking down on both.

September·Peaking now

Jun–Sep

The hydrangeas are fullest in late July and August. These are the driest, sunniest, warmest months, giving the best odds on the sharp blue-and-green contrast before midday cloud, and it is warm enough to swim from the marked zones.

Year-round The blue-and-green twin crater lakes and their rim viewpoints are here year-round, and they are clearest before the midday cloud comes in. Blue hydrangeas line the roads from June to September.

Sete Cidades is two lakes lying side by side in the same volcanic crater, one clear sky-blue and one deep green. They are really a single body of water, joined under a low road bridge, and nothing divides the colours but light. The shallower, weed-fringed side throws back green; the deeper one mirrors the sky. On a bright day the contrast is sharp enough that people plan the whole visit around the weather. The name means Seven Cities, after a phantom island medieval charts placed out in this ocean, settled by seven bishops who had fled the Moors. Both lakes fill the floor of a caldera about five kilometres across, left when a great volcano collapsed in on itself. The last eruption inside these walls came around 1440, and the ground has been quiet since. The rim stands 300 metres above the water, and you look almost straight down onto the village on the crater floor. The classic view is from Vista do Rei, the King's View, named for a royal visit in 1901. Come early: cloud spills over the rim through the day and hides the colours, and the Azores make their own weather. In summer the roads down to the water are walled with blue hydrangeas, an Azorean signature that runs from June into September. At the bottom sits a quiet village of whitewashed houses and the slender São Nicolau church at the end of a cypress avenue. You can walk or ride the crater ridge, paddle a canoe across the green lake, or swim on a warm day. The whole basin is a protected landscape and still farmed and lived in — there are cattle grazing inside the crater.

Worth knowing

Good to know

The colours hold only until the caldera clouds up — that is usually within three hours of sunrise in summer, and an overcast morning flattens both lakes to the same grey.
The hydrangea hedges run blue from June into September — late July and August are the fullest, with the heads still greening in June and browning off by late September.
Swim only from the marked zones — the lake is warm enough in high summer, but stretches can turn murky with algae, so choose a spot the signs point to.

Things to do

1
Walk the rim from Vista do Rei to Boca do Inferno
Vista do Rei looks straight down on the village and the low bridge where the two colours meet, with the gutted shell of the Monte Palace hotel standing behind its railing. Keep going along the rim and the ground climbs to Boca do Inferno, where four lagoons come into view at once — the two big ones and the smaller ponds held in side craters. Go early, before cloud rolls up the caldera and swallows both.
2
Ride the pasture tracks on the caldera rim
The caldera rim is working pasture, and the dirt tracks that serve it run for kilometres between cryptomeria stands and hydrangea hedges. Stables in the parish take riders out along them at walking pace, and the twin lakes drop in and out of view as the track swings through the trees.
3
Walk down to the lakeshore in the village
From the village street the ground drops to the water in a few metres, and a flat path runs the shore past the canoe landing, reeds, and fields where cattle graze right down to the edge. This is the one place in the caldera where you look up at the rim instead of down from it.
4
Paddle across the green lake
Rent a kayak or canoe by the village and push out onto Lagoa Verde, the caldera walls rising green all around you. Look up from water level and the rim viewpoints shrink to small notches on the skyline.