… willingly taken, that is…

Came down from the top of the volcano rim to the village of Furnas. In the middle of the village, there is an area which is pock marked by caldeiras like this. There are either a lot of water vapor escaping from holes in the ground or water boiling at the surface from the heat of escaping water and gas from below.

That is when you realize that you are literally walking on top of a dormant volcano!!

… Literally if they stepped a couple of feet back, they would have been about a few thousand feet below….

This picture is taken from the top of the volcano crater lip. You can see the Lake Furnas in the picture. Now look towards the bottom portion of the picture… Do you see some smoke coming out? If you zoom in, you will see a few small holes and that is boiling water and steam. The water is getting heated by the hot magma way underneath. (This is a dormant volcano).

Every morning, restaurants nearby start cooking meat by dropping the stuff in containers way inside the holes and let it be for nearly five hours. You need to make reservations early!!

This lake is in the crater of a volcano. There are three of them in Sao Miguel. After the volcano erupts and settles down, the top usually collapses. Over the years, rain water collects and forms these kind of crater lakes.

Fairly well taken, I must say…