Pico do Fogo

Fogo Natural Park was created in 2003 on the island of the same name, in Cape Verde, and protects some 85 km² around the Pico do Fogo volcano, which at some 2,829 metres is the highest point in the archipelago and the country's only active volcano.

Its most singular feature is human: inside the caldera, at the foot of the cone, sits Chã das Caldeiras, a group of villages whose inhabitants live on the volcanic soil growing vines, coffee and fruit, in one of the few places in the world where a community lives permanently inside the caldera of an active volcano. The wine of Chã, made on ash and lapilli, is a singular product of the archipelago.

That coexistence has a price. The eruption of November 2014, which lasted until February 2015, buried much of the villages of Portela and Bangaeira under lava, including the park headquarters and the wineries, and forced the whole population to be evacuated; many residents returned afterwards and rebuilt on the lava flow. The park also protects the volcano's high-altitude vegetation, with Cape Verdean endemics adapted to ash and to aridity.