Picture taken with drone this summer on pico Island, Azores (discover more about Pico Mountain, the highest peak in Portugal)

A picture taken on our first trip to the Azores, in 2012 (see our Angra do Heroismo travel guide). This hill captured my attention as it looks like it has big eyebrows and/or it is wearing a mask 🙂 

Lava Stone Houses

Driving around Pico Island, in the Azores, you’ll see a lot of this typical stone houses, with the characteristic white paint between the basaltic rocks of which they are made. Doors and windows are often painted red, blue or green.

The stark contrast between the lava fields, or the lush vegetation, depending on the location, create a scenery quite particular, that visitors love to photograph. Most of the traditional Pico houses were done like this also on other Azorean islands, but for some reason, probably due to the typical surroundings, people tend to associate them with this beautiful island.

Pico Island Vineyard Culture

Adding to this, the fact that often these stone houses are surrounded by the characteristic patch of little stone walls made to protect countless contiguous rectangular plots (called currais here) from wind and sea water, create a unique landscape that in fact is recognized by Unesco as a World Heritage Site