© Gaia Tourism 2018
© GAIA - CABO VERDE TOURISM
Blaise Menuet - Managing Director
Contacts:
Telephone office: (+238) 993 99 20
Telephone operations: (+238) 999 44 55
E-mail: office@gaiatourism.cv
On the Island of Fogo we offer following services:
Cha de Caldeiras
Day Trip to active volcano
from 80€/person
Visit Fogo one of the southernmost islands in Cape Verde. Fogo is located between the islands of Santiago and Brava. Practically the whole island is a stratovolcano that has been periodically active: it last erupted in 2014. The largest volcanic feature is a nine kilometres (5.6 miles) caldera, which has walls one kilometre (0.62 miles) high. The caldera has a breach in its eastern rim, and in the centre a resurgent dome with an ash cone that forms the highest point of the island: its summit is about one hundred m higher than the surrounding caldera wall. Lava from the volcano has reached the eastern coast of the island within historical times.
Two small villages, Portela and Bangaeira, exist in the floor of the caldera (Chã das Caldeiras); the residents were evacuated during eruptions.
The island's main city is São Filipe, near which is an airport. Fogo is largely an agricultural island. It has fertile land in the south-west with a slope of about ten to fifteen degrees. The north and the east are steeper. The island rises abruptly from the ocean, which can be as deep as 5,300 metres (17,400 feet) at a distance of five kilometres (3.1 miles) from the shoreline. In the south and west parts of the island, there are numerous hills and small mountains that were formed out of different small volcanoes such as Achada Furna, Monte Largo, Monte Grande and Lagariça, tiny small underwater hills that were volcanoes surrounding the islands are rarely founded. The exception is to the west, where the island is connected to another seamount; further west in Brava.
The steep slopes in the north-eastern part are green and grassy all year round. The rest of the mountain is dry and barren, its dry creeks and streams are dry washes.
São Filipe's buildings use classic Portuguese colonial architecture. Mosteiros in the north-east is the island's second most important town.
A violent eruption took place in 1680, forming a new cone that was visible over hundreds of kilometres but lasted only for a few years. It was during this eruption that the island earned its name.