MYTHOLOGY AND LOCATION

The epic tale of the sailing adventures of Jason and the Argonauts - the crew of the ship Argo in the Aegean - soon became a symbol of maritime heroism in Greek Mythology as well as other works like the famous Odyssey. Looking at the Portuguese world, Ulysses’ voyage could have brought him all the way to former Olisipo (Lisbon), thereby linking the Mediterranean to the Atlantic with an early "voyage of discovery". In 1684 Vincenzo Coronelli, a map and globe maker and a Minorite friar, founded in Venice the first geographical society of the world, named “Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti” (Cosmographical Academy of the Argonauts), thus becoming the official Cosmographer to the Republic of Venice a year later. He was the author of a famous map of the Azores. The epic tale of the sailing adventures of Jason and the Argonauts - the crew of the ship Argo in the Aegean - soon became a symbol of maritime heroism in Greek Mythology as well as other works like the famous Odyssey. Looking at the Portuguese world, Ulysses’ voyage could have brought him all the way to former Olisipo (Lisbon), thereby linking the Mediterranean to the Atlantic with an early "voyage of discovery". In 1684 Vincenzo Coronelli, a map and globe maker and a Minorite friar, founded in Venice the first geographical society of the world, named “Accademia Cosmografica degli Argonauti” (Cosmographical Academy of the Argonauts), thus becoming the official Cosmographer to the Republic of Venice a year later. He was the author of a famous map of the Azores. Setting the sails on the Azores in the heart of the Atlantic, one finds that the first and only whaling boat operating out of Horta on Faial Island, in 1856, was also named after Jason's ship, the brig Argo, and its skipper was an argonaut from the island of Flores, António Teodoro Armas. The argonaut is also a rare cephalopodus mollusc, with sub-species like Argonauta argo which navigates in the open sea currents, like those of the Atlantic Ocean, and whose female builds the fragile paper white calcareous 'shell' which is actually an egg case and a living symbol of Paleonthology, chosen as our logo. Flores and Corvo are the only Azorean islands emerging from the American tectonic plate, and they are, therefore, the most stable islands of the whole Archipelago - firm land which doesn't shake. Fajã Grande has some 200 inhabitants and, lying on the "alternative" west coast of Flores, it is Europe's westernmost village. It is situated on the seashore of a coastal plain (fajã) and is enclosed by a high cliff with about 20 waterfalls. A few minutes from home are natural rock pools, water holes under the waterfalls, a couple of restaurants and a Balneario with beach facilities, a natural sea-water swimming pool for children and some little taverns. All this lying under the orange sunset over the ocean...