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Beach guide

Cachalote pools, Porto Moniz

A second set of lava pools a few minutes along the same seafront, free to enter — and absent from the portaria, so they carry no season and no lifeguard of their own.

Checked against the portaria and the municipality’s own pages on July 26, 2026.

What it actually is

Surface
Lava rock pools
Municipality
Porto Moniz

The same coast, the same black rock, and no turnstile. Almost nothing written in English mentions them, which is why people queue at the paid complex with the free pools in sight along the promenade.

No Blue Flag for 2026. A flag is an application as much as an award, so a beach without one has not necessarily failed anything.

A white wave bursting over a black lava ridge into a rock pool at Porto Moniz under broken cloud, with the flat-topped Ilhéu Mole islet standing offshore.
The free pools along the same seafront, with the Ilhéu Mole behind. The Atlantic decides the swimming here.Landsmann

What the state says about it

It is not named in Annex IV of Portaria n.º 204-A/2026/1 at all. No bathing season, no lifeguard designation, and no water quality sampling published under that regime.

It does not appear in the “praia de banhos” column. The annex’s own footnote says that means assistance to bathers is not assured — not “sometimes”, not “in season”. Not assured.

Neither of those is our judgement. It is which column the beach appears in.

Portaria n.º 204-A/2026/1 · Diário da República, 1.ª série, n.º 84, Suplemento · Anexo IV

What it costs

Free. There is no entry charge.

All fourteen beaches, compared

Getting there

It sits in the concelho of Porto Moniz, which is how the portaria files it.

MadeiraBus publishes a direct route from Funchal to this destination: 380 · 340.

Getting around without a car