Sirens of the Azores
Porta do Diabo
Ginetes, at the western end of São Miguel
What is it?
A gate in the rock on the lava coast at Várzea, in the parish of Ginetes, at the western tip of the island.
Be told this plainly: "Porta do Diabo" is a local name, not an official one. It appears in no Azorean toponymic, geological or heritage register. We use it because that is what it is called.
What is officially registered is what it stands on. The Monumento Natural Regional do Pico das Camarinhas – Ponta da Ferraria, code SMG05, 40 hectares: a basaltic scoria cone with a west–east crater, a lava delta running into the sea, a trachytic dome, and a fossil sea cliff a hundred metres high.
And something you will not find in a guidebook: the lava here carries gabbroic and ultramafic xenoliths — fragments of the deep crust and mantle, rich in olivine and pyroxene, brought up and left in the rock. The island's own foundations, at the surface, at the edge of it.
When was it made?
Contested, and it is worth knowing why.
The geosite record dates the Pico das Camarinhas flow to around 1140 AD — three centuries before anyone lived here. Older volcanological literature instead attributes it to an eruption in 1713. Both figures are in print. The current dating is the earlier one.
What about 1444?
1444 is the traditional date for the settlement of São Miguel. It is not a documented one, and it is worth saying so.
The first secure document is a royal charter of 2 July 1439, in which D. Afonso V licenses the Infante D. Henrique to settle the seven islands. The discovery date is described by the Portuguese national encyclopaedia as "one of the most controversial questions in the history of fifteenth-century Portuguese navigation." The evidence is mid-fifteenth-century portolan charts, not administrative records.
Gonçalo Velho Cabral, knight of the Order of Christ, is credited with reaching Santa Maria in 1431 and with the first captaincies on Santa Maria and São Miguel.
AND HERE IS THE THING NOBODY PUTS TOGETHER.
The 1439–1444 window is also when Sete Cidades erupted. Gaspar Frutuoso records navigators returning to find the west of the island completely altered, with tree trunks and pumice floating on the sea.
On the traditional chronology, the arrival and the island's largest historical eruption are the same event window. The first people to settle the west end arrived at a coast that had just been rebuilt.
Can I visit?
Yes. The trail is PRC43 SMI — Pico das Camarinhas – Ponta da Ferraria.
The thermal spring at the shore reaches about 60 °C, and the sea pool where it mixes sits around 40 °C. It is a tidal rock basin with a fixed rope.
It is only usable around low tide. Outside that window the Atlantic owns it. Check the tide table before you drive out, not after.
Nesting ground for Cory's shearwater and the Barolo shearwater; a BirdLife Important Bird Area, a UNESCO Açores Geopark geosite, and beside a marine protected area.
Also in this parish: Ponta do Escalvado, a protected area and viewpoint at 240 m, used historically and still as a whale-watching vigia, with the cliffs running north to Mosteiros. No facilities of any kind.