Discover the Algarve wilderness and a lot about the history, the customs, the habits and the traditions that are related with the natural heritage and the natural resources of this region. A real guide will be in contact with the visitors during the Virtual Tour and he will share the information, with photos, about the local Geology, Fauna, Flora and Culture while using the panoramic images of the Cerro da Cabeça. This area is classified as a Site of Community Importance by the European Union Natura 2000 network and is an excellent example of the region biodiversity.

This Virtual Tour was concept with the purpose of allowing people to visit a natural area, to enjoy the outstanding landscapes, to increase the knowledge about the nature of this region, have a good quality time in the comfort of the sofa, and at same time unwind a little bit of this confinement situation and impossibility to travel that the actual pandemic has imposed on all of us.

You can use this Virtual Tour for your own profit as a break for the bitterness of the actual situation, you can offer it to someone that you care about, you can use it to revisit and remember a nice experience that you had in past with PerNatur or even use it to discover a good and valid option of destiny for a future travel.

Whatever is your reason to do this Tour you will also contribute to support those ones, and they families, that work in the sector of nature tourism and that currently go through a harsh reality.

The Cerro da Cabeça is located at less than 10 km Northeast of Olhão, and is an area of recognised environmental value and is classified as a Site of Community Importance in the nature protection network within the European Union space, Natura 2000. This allows us to offer visitors nature tourism experiences of high quality such as the visit to a natural geological monument composed by limestone rock with karst landforms, which shapes the major area of this geological morphology in the south of the country together with countless caves that are used as shelter by different species of bats.

The flora includes native vegetation that suffers little or almost no human interference, such as the Kermes oak (Quercus coccifera) representative of Barrocal vegetation, the Peony (Paeonia broteroi), Maidenhair (Asplenium trichomanes), the Mediterranean dwarf palm (Chamaerops humilis), the Strawberry Tree (Arbutus unedo), the Daffodil (Narcissus calcicola).

Several birds such as; the Hoopoe (Upupa epops), the Woodchat Shrike (Lanius senator), the Bee-eater (Merops apiaster), the Black Wheatear (Oenanthe leucura), the Buzzard (Buteo buteo) can be seen permanently or temporarily. Other animals like the Natterjack Toad (Epidalea calamita), the Mehely´s horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus mehelyi), the Mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon) the Iberian Wall Lizard (Podarcis hispanics) or the Two-tailed Pasha (Charaxes jasius) inhabit this area.

Photo credit: Yogendra174 / Visualhunt / CC BY

Charaxes jasius - Borboleta do Medronheiro

Photo credit: Sonja & Roland / VisualHunt / CC BY

The geological richness of limestone and the abundance of wood encouraged the lime industry, which is very traditional in Algarve probably related to the cultural heritage left by Arabic people that ruled this territory by centuries. Cerro da Cabeça has twos ruins of lime kilns, in relative good state of conservation, testimony to that industry that was an important source of income for the local population.