Fogo, Cape Verde
Today we had an incredible opportunity to visit the active volcano of Fogo. This volcano is the highest mountain in the Cape Verde Islands, rising 2829 meters above sea level (9,336 feet), but since it comes straight up from an ocean floor about 5,000 meters deep, it is an extremely high mountain. The island is a stratovolcano, which has erupted a couple of times a century since it was discovered about 1500. The most recent eruption was in 1995 and the previous one in 1951. We drove from the main town of São Filipe near the coast to the edge of the crater. There we crossed the crater wall where it had been breached by the 1951 eruption and drove down into the 8 km. wide caldera. We soon came to the small eruption cone from which the 1995 lava emerged. The picture shows the older volcanic cone, Pico do Fogo in the background, the 1995 cone in the middle, and the lava field in the foreground. Only about a mile past the point where the road had to be rebuilt where it crosses the most recent lava we came to the village of Chã das Caldeiras, where people live right in the crater itself. The little settlement is home to a small winery, which uses grapes grown on the caldera floor. The inhabitants of Chã das Caldeiras were evacuated during the last eruption, but now have returned and are carving out an existence in this rather inhospitable landscape. The day spent right inside this magnificent volcano was most memorable one and we can contemplate Fogo’s scale and its fiery birth and development as we sail north to our next group of volcanic islands, the Canaries.
Today we had an incredible opportunity to visit the active volcano of Fogo. This volcano is the highest mountain in the Cape Verde Islands, rising 2829 meters above sea level (9,336 feet), but since it comes straight up from an ocean floor about 5,000 meters deep, it is an extremely high mountain. The island is a stratovolcano, which has erupted a couple of times a century since it was discovered about 1500. The most recent eruption was in 1995 and the previous one in 1951. We drove from the main town of São Filipe near the coast to the edge of the crater. There we crossed the crater wall where it had been breached by the 1951 eruption and drove down into the 8 km. wide caldera. We soon came to the small eruption cone from which the 1995 lava emerged. The picture shows the older volcanic cone, Pico do Fogo in the background, the 1995 cone in the middle, and the lava field in the foreground. Only about a mile past the point where the road had to be rebuilt where it crosses the most recent lava we came to the village of Chã das Caldeiras, where people live right in the crater itself. The little settlement is home to a small winery, which uses grapes grown on the caldera floor. The inhabitants of Chã das Caldeiras were evacuated during the last eruption, but now have returned and are carving out an existence in this rather inhospitable landscape. The day spent right inside this magnificent volcano was most memorable one and we can contemplate Fogo’s scale and its fiery birth and development as we sail north to our next group of volcanic islands, the Canaries.
