Culatra Island

Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / area missing

The Ilha da Culatra, or Ilha do Farol, is an inhabited Portuguese Atlantic island.

Location

The island Culatra located in the south of the country in the natural park Parque Natural da Ria Formosa on the Gulf of Cádiz and is part of the Algarve region. It forms together with the adjacent islands, only interrupted by a few channels or gullies island chain that forms a natural protection of the area between the islands and the mainland lagoon. It is part of the municipality of Faro in the same district at the so-called sand Algarve. To the east is the Ilha da Armona and west, separated only by the Canal de Olhão, the Ilha da Baretta is the Cabo de Santa Maria, which - apart from the archipelagos of Madeira and the Savage Islands gene - the southernmost point of Portugal.

Description

The flat sand and dune island is about 7 km long, up to well over one kilometer wide and has an area of ​​several square kilometers. It is just like the neighboring beach islands formed by sediments that have been eroded to the Steiküsten the western Algarve by erosion and deposited further east in the course of time here because of the prevailing flow conditions. Since the western part of the island is often also called Ilha do Farol, it is likely that it has been originally acted by two separate islands that were only connected due to land increases by sediment deposits together.

On the Ilha de Culatra constantly live about 1000 inhabitants spread over three settlements: Culatra is approximately in the middle of the island and Farol in the far west; is called a third settlement, hangares between both places.

Infrastructure, tourism and sight

A circulating according to a fixed timetable ferry connects, seasonal different number of times, especially in the summer months the mainland port of Olhão on the Ilha de Armona with the places Culatra and Farol on the Ilha de Culatra. On the island there are no hotels, but only accommodation in private apartments or smaller pensions, so that tourism is not as significant as in other regions of the Algarve. The dividend is re currently on the south coast and along the entire length thereof island sand beach is therefore hardly populated even in high season.

Still fishing is a non-negligible economic factor. The few roads on the island are mostly unpaved.

The most striking building is the built in 1851 and is 47 meters high lighthouse (Portuguese: Farol ) do Cabo de Santa Maria with a nominal range of about 25 nautical miles west of the island in the village of Farol.