Experience the best of Santa Maria

Santa Maria is the southernmost and easternmost island of the Azores, and the first to be settled by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century. Vila do Porto, its small main town, is set above a harbour and holds chapels, a small fort and whitewashed houses. The island is geologically older and flatter than the others, and its dry, warm climate gives it the archipelago's best beaches.

Praia Formosa is a long golden-sand beach, unusual in the Azores, and the Baía de São Lourenço is a sheltered bay below terraced vineyards walled in black stone, a favourite view. At Barreiro da Faneca the red-brown clay hills look more like a desert than an Atlantic island. The chapel of Nossa Senhora dos Anjos is said to be where Columbus and his crew prayed in 1493, on their way home from the Americas.

Island cooking relies on fish, limpets, beef and the sweet bread that is found across the Azores, with local cheeses and wine from the terraces. The villages are small and whitewashed, and life on Santa Maria is quiet. Summer is the season for the beaches, and the winters are mild but wet.