The Occultist Who Faked His Own Death at This Exact Cliff

In September 1930, the British occultist Aleister Crowley staged his own suicide at Boca do Inferno. He'd been traveling with a much younger companion whose behavior had begun to frustrate him, and rather than simply part ways, he plotted an elaborate exit with the help of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa, who translated Crowley's mangled Portuguese and handed his farewell note to the local press. The note, addressed to the woman he'd left behind, made it look as though the sea had swallowed him at the blowhole. Newspapers across Europe ran the story of the Great Beast's death — until Crowley resurfaced three weeks later at the opening of an exhibition of his own artwork in Berlin, very much alive. A small plaque at the site still tells the story today.

The opening chase of On Her Majesty's Secret Service was filmed right here on Praia do Guincho in 1969 — George Lazenby's first scene as Bond has him rescuing Tracy from the surf and fighting off two attackers on this exact stretch of sand. Because Guincho sits inside a protected natural park, development was never allowed to catch up with the coastline, and the beach still looks almost exactly as it did on camera more than fifty years ago.