Azores travel: when to go, what to do and which island to pick

The largest island takes up most first trips. In three days you see the Sete Cidades crater and its two lakes, the Lagoa do Fogo viewpoint (a 30-minute walk down) and the Furnas geothermal valley, where cozido stew cooks underground. Allow 45 minutes by road from Ponta Delgada to Furnas. A week lets you add the north-east, the Gorreana tea plantation and the Caloura pools. There are no long sandy beaches here as in the Algarve: you swim mostly in lava rock pools.

Three islands packed into the central group, linked by ferries of 30 to 60 minutes in summer. Faial is explored around its caldera and the Capelinhos volcano, which rose from the sea in 1957. Pico holds the highest summit in Portugal, 2351 metres, a 6 to 8-hour round-trip climb, and UNESCO-listed vineyards grown in lava enclosures, a listing they share with the terraces of the Douro. Sao Jorge lines up fajas, coastal shelves formed by landslides. Allow at least four days for the three.

Terceira leans on Angra do Heroismo, the archipelago's first UNESCO-listed town, and on the Algar do Carvao, a volcanic chimney you descend into in the afternoon. It is also the island of the touradas a corda, street bull runs held from May to October. Azores Airlines internal flights put it 45 minutes from Sao Miguel, making it the most common second stop on a five-day trip and easier to reach than the western islands.

Flores and Corvo form the westernmost point of geographical Europe. Flores lives for its waterfalls, crater lagoons and the hamlet of Faja Grande, and has to be earned: flights from Sao Miguel take nearly 2 hours with a stop, and fog regularly cancels rotations. Corvo, 400 residents, is visited on a half-day boat trip from Flores. Put these two islands at the start and end of your trip to absorb a possible flight delay.

The archipelago has dozens of official trails, often loops of 2 to 4 hours along irrigation channels or crater rims. Whale watching runs year-round from Ponta Delgada, Lajes do Pico and Horta: blue whales and fin whales pass on migration between April and June, sperm whales are resident. Afterwards, the iron-rich pools of Terra Nostra park in Furnas and the warm Caldeira Velha waterfall cost a few euros. A daily budget runs from about 55 euros in a dorm to 250 euros in an upmarket hotel.