Our long journey along the chain of remote islands leading up the middle of the Atlantic Ocean began in earnest today as we set out on our first multiday sea crossing, from the Falkland Islands to South Georgia. It will be another week before we reach the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, but we are already following a major geological feature of the South Atlantic, the North Scotia Ridge. We will follow this for two days to the spectacular mountains and astounding wildlife of South Georgia.
4/5/2023
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National Geographic Explorer
Fogo, Cape Verde Islands
Today we visited Fogo, the famous, active volcano of the Cape Verde Islands. Fogo (“fire” in Portuguese) has been erupting episodically since at least 1500 and likely for centuries or millennia before that. Pirate William Dampier observed an eruption in 1632. We took our Zodiacs ashore into the small harbor and rode on local vans from the coastal town of São Felipe up into the mountains and into the caldera itself. We drove across lava from the 1951 eruption which breached the caldera rim, and we walked past the sign welcoming us to the National Park and past the blocky lava from the eruption. We then drove along the old road into the caldera. We soon encountered a detour necessitated by the fact that the most recent eruption in 2014 had covered the road with a lava flow that was about seven meters thick. The new road took us around the caldera wall to the little village of Cha das Caldeiras. The village was destroyed by lava in the 1995 eruption, rebuilt, and then destroyed again by the 2014 lava. Fresh lava is everywhere throughout the village, but residents are slowly rebuilding once again and have constructed a number of new houses, a new inn, and a new winery to continue the wine business that was flourishing before the most recent eruption. We were tremendously impressed by the persistence of the citizens of Cha das Caldeiras, who began rebuilding in 2015 while the lava was still glowing. After our inspiring visit to the caldera and the village of Cha, we returned to the harbor and once again took our Zodiacs back to National Geographic Explorer . We weighed anchor and continued our northward voyage to our next landing in the Canary Islands.