Day 1: Pick up from Horta airport and transfer to your accommodation. The taxi transfer will take you to the Hortacetaceos base and show you how to make your own way there the next day.

Day 2: Rendezvous with Pedro at 9am for the first boat trip. The afternoon is free, giving you an opportunity to explore the small town of Horta and admire the numerous drawings left by travelling sailors (famous or not!) at the marina.

Day 3: Second boat trip. Afterwards you’ll appreciate a nice swim at “Porto Pim”. This fantastic bay, cemetery to thousands of sperm whales, today hosts a magnificent black-sand beach. Scrimshaws, sculpted from the whales’ teeth, can be seen at the inevitable “Café Sport”.

Day 4: In the morning you can visit the main attractions of Faial (see “Optional Activities”). In the afternoon we will pick you up from your accommodation and take you to the ferry terminal where a 30-minute boat ride will transport you to Madelena. We will be waiting there to transfer you to Espaço Talassa in Lajes do Pico.

Day 5: Third boat trip trailing the dolphins and whales of the south of Pico. In the afternoon a stroll to the “Vigia de Queimada” (the look-out) will give you a better understanding of how we situate the animals and how Marcel leads us to them. Magic!

Day 6: Fourth and last boat trip, after which, you can delve in to the history and culture of whaling in the Azores at the museum in Lajes (a few metres from our base) and at SIBIL, the old sperm-whale conditioning factory, now converted in to an arts of the sea centre.

Day 7: Hikers can tackle Mount Pico while bio-diversity enthusiasts can head for Sao Jorge Island. See “Optional Activities”.

Day 8: Alas…direction Madelena and then Horta airport, after crossing the famous Vitorinio Nemésio channel that separates the two islands.

Day 4: A 4-hour discovery tour of Faial that takes you to Caldeira (the highest point on the island), to the Capelinhos volcano, and to the Espalamaca headland. Push it to 7 hours and you can also visit the “Capelinho Information centre” and enjoy a leisurely bite to eat by the sea (entry fee and lunch included in the price). To the extent that we always privilege small groups, it is possible to adapt these trips according to individual preferences.

Day 7: Climb Portugal’s highest mountain, the Pico volcano, learn more here or spend the day learning about the treasures of the Azorean sea, over and above whales and dolphins, more info here.

By choosing Espaço Talassa, you choose to limit your ecological footprint.

• Espaço Talassa plants trees and contributes to a “micro-reserve” project as compensation for the ecological deficit and the CO2 emissions related to our whale watching activity, in collaboration with association “Quercus”.
• For each customer €0,50 cents will be donated towards the “Cabeço Santo” (GPS position: 40º31’52″N 8º20’36″W- Google Maps) reforestation project in the mountain range of Caramulo, victim of a terrible forest fire in 2005. Soon the indigenous vegetation will substitute eucalyptus, acacias and other infesters.

It’s true: “the sea is blue because forests are green”!

Where are the Azores?

• This is where Europe ends: 38 degrees North and 30 degrees West, some 800 nautical miles from the nearest coast, in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The Azoreans, isolated for centuries, have survived on their resources of agriculture, fishing and…. whale hunting. Melville drew inspiration from such odysseys to write his epic tale, “Moby Dick”.
• For the last 30 years, it has been strictly prohibited to harm cetaceans in the Azores.
• The sperm whale prefers the south coast of Pico. Here, assisted by Marcel, the Queimada’s lookout, you can observe the whales and get close to them. The ambition of the project goes even further as it includes an introduction into other traces and vestiges of the whaling culture and tradition, of which the people of Lajes are the last witnesses.
• Last but not least these wildlife observation holidays, which respect both the animals and the local culture, are the natural way for Azoreans to continue to remain involved with whales long after the end of whale hunting in 1984. Whale watching offers an alternative way with whales for the Lajes community, and at the same time is an ideal way to protect the giants of the sea.
• To have a Wiki-idea about the Azores, please click here

Thanks to our look-out techniques from land, we don’t leave the harbour blindly. Each morning before embarking, a briefing is held during which we take into consideration the observations made by the lookout. The type of cetacean spotted, their groups, their distance from the harbour, the sea conditions, the number of animals in the group, and the absence or presence of smaller whales are all necessary factors in assessing the quality of forthcoming excursions.

See statistics since 1997

28 cetacean species frequent the Azores sea

In the interface of the North Atlantic, between “hot water” and “cold water”, the archipelago is without any doubt one of the best places for cetacean observation in the northern hemisphere. Also, because the islands are far away from the main merchant navy routes, recreational sailing has not yet made the carnage known in Continental Europe, and the large pollution emitters are relatively far off.

List of Cetacean of the Azores