11-10 Funchal, Madeira

This is one of my favorite places! We’ve visited here before and I just fell in love with the island – the geography, the people, the culture. It’s a beautiful, lush place with hills and craggy cliffs that drop off into the sea. Funchal sits right on the water and the town, with it’s little houses and windy streets, nestles itself in the hills that rise above the harbor. So picturesque!

The Captain gets us in early, so we have even more time to explore and hike the levadas today. Levadas are man-made waterways that were dug as irrigation ditches years ago. No longer used for irrigation, they have turned into walking trails of various intensity and can be found all over the island. Our original plan was to take a hiking tour. But our arrival wasn’t scheduled until after the tour began. The tour operator said he could arrange a taxi to take us to the tour (already in progress), then get us back to the ship, but it would cost an extra 100 Euros. Thanks, but no thanks! Instead, we decided to rent a car and hike the levadas ourselves. As the day drew nearer to arriving in Funchal, we started having 2^nd thoughts about the car. It’s hell driving in Madeira. The streets are all very narrow and windy, and its just treacherous to try to navigate. We started reading some more about the levadas and found some that were close to town. We also found the rental car office – in the opposite direction of Funchal – out by the beaches and hotel zone – and made an executive decision to ditch the car. Probably one of our smarter moves!

The day is beautiful, we can walk everywhere we want, so what the heck! We’re off to explore on our own without wheels. We take off down the dock (ignoring the $8 shuttle – its only a 20 minute walk into town!) and begin to explore. The main town of Funchal is really easy to navigate – in no time we find the visitor’s Information center, get info from the very helpful woman in the office, and make our way out onto the main street to find the bus kiosk for our day tickets and bus #20 or 21 to get us to Monte – which will lead us to the levada.

Easy-peasy! Instead of the 10 Euro Funicular ride up the mountain to Monte, we take the 85 centimo bus ride which is worth more than the 10 Euro cable car! The driver thinks he’s Mario Andretti (or Evil Kneivil, we can’t decide!) taking turns at breathtaking speeds and squeezing past parked cars and oncoming traffic like his life depends on it. Come to think of it, it does! And so does ours! We make up the mountain alive and are dumped out on the streets above Monte.

We are doubly glad that we didn’t rent a car, since we would be in competition with drivers like we just experienced.

Monte is a big tourist destination for it’s beautiful cathedral, excellent viewpoints of Funchal below and the famous basket sleds. Up at the top of the mountain, you can hire these 2 guys to take you down 2 KM in a big basket sled. They actually steer and use their special shoes as brakes while they take you down the twisty-turny little roads of Madeira. It looks really fun, but we’re on a levada mission, so after taking a few pictures and watching the tours take the baskets down the hill, we’re off in search of the levada.

Signage is really helpful and we have no problem finding the trail head. It’s actually a really pretty hike through the woods, nice cool day in the shade, and not a lot of others on the trail. We passed a fork in the trail with a sign to Curral dos Romeiros, but kept going straight in what we hoped was the direction of Levada dos Tornos Camacha. The trail kept going up and up – it was really steep and at one point we had to crawl through some downed trees. Pretty hairy hiking! Finally, the trail leveled out and we found the levada – it’s basically a cement trench about 4 feet wide and 3 or 4 feet deep filled with clear, clean cool running water.

The levada ran to the right and left. To the left was a tunnel, the right more mountain hiking. No signs. Shoot! We pulled out our little map (which had scarcely any detail on it, but did show a couple of trails!) and began to wonder about where we were. As we stood there looking perplexed, a helpful German couple came up and showed us their map. We had managed to not pay any attention to our end destination (yep, it was Curral dos Romeiros) and we were on a little spur that circled up above the trails and then back down to Romeiros. Well, there goes my map reading credibility! But thanks to the kindness of that German couple, at least we knew we could get to Romeiros the way we were heading and didn’t have to double back down the steep hill.

We began following the levada around. It was very scenic – we passed under a waterfall rushing down the steep ravines into one of the riverbeds way, way below us. As we rounded the curve past the waterfall, the hiking took a slightly terrifying turn – we were walking on the edge of the levada, mostly cement or rock, about 18” wide. At some parts, there was nothing on the right of the walkway – nothing that is but a 500+ foot drop off into that steep ravine I just mentioned. At one point in time, we couldn’t even look down it was so scary – we just kept walking – watching our feet and not looking at anything but the ledge in front of us. The “trail” would open up occasionally and provide a wider area to walk, but just as quickly it would go away again and we were on the edge of the precipice. The landscape was incredibly beautiful (when we could look at it!!!), and peaceful as we were the only ones walking, just a little bit on the exhilarating side of mountain hiking.

When the path opened up, we did have incredible views of Funchal way below us, and our gargantuan ship docked in the harbor. We could also see all the way back to Monte – tracing our path down from the cable car station, and up through the hills along the levada. After about an hour of walking from the waterfall, when we were just convinced we’d gone the wrong way and we’d have to go back along that damn ravine, we turned a corner and found the town of Romeiros! Yea! We made it. A bus was at the terminus stop – but we walked a little way around the town (which was really just a few houses grouped together on top of the hill) and when we went to turn around to go to the bus, it left. Tactical error! Had to wait another 25 minutes for the next bus. Not a big deal, since we had so much time ashore, and it was quiet and peaceful sitting there at the bus stop with absolutely no activity going on whatsoever.

Once on the bus it was a very quick 20 minutes back down into town. Evil Knevil #2 actually got us down the hill without incident, but I’ll never know how. Wow! They love to drive fast around here – I am SO glad we didn’t rent a car! We hopped off the bus at the market and wandered around the shopping area a bit. As I said before, it’s really easy to navigate downtown Funchal, so we just meandered here and there, window shopping, remarking on how expensive the clothes were – not as bad as Vigo – but still….mind boggling!

We strolled down up the tight little lanes with cars squeezing through and avoiding the pedestrians. At the center of the historic district is a walking pedestrian area where we sat at an outdoor café called the Centro Comercial da se, and had beer, wine and tried Espada = the local fish. Espada is a big really ugly looking fish – it almost looks like an eel with huge eyes– that is fished in very deep waters (about 3,000 feet down) only 2 places in the world: Madeira and somewhere in Japan. While Espada might win awards for the ugliest fish in the world, it could also win an award for the most delicious. We got a ½ portion and shared a large plate heaped with veggies and a big, breaded piece of fish. It was a very rich but flaky white fish that was all gone way to quickly for us! Yummy.

Next we walked off our midday repast by strolling back around the shops, looking at all the Madeira wine we couldn’t bring home (I’m not putting it in the checked bag – no way!), the baskets and straw wear and the expensive clothing. Restocked our beverage supply for the long ride home, then wandered back toward the ship. I had spied some umbrella’d tables tucked away down a little alleyway – so we went exploring and found an adorable café behind a car dealership. Very reasonable prices, good wine – it always pays to stay off the beaten track. We sat outside enjoying the sunshine and watching the goings on with the dealership (how they get in and out of that place is amazing – the entrance to what we think was the service bay had little more turning area than in a phone booth – cars on the side of the road, people backing up, maneuvering. Wow!).

Walked our way back to the ship – through the tourist district (where a meal at the McDonald’s cost more than our entire food purchases!) – and boarded with about an hour to spare. Hung out aboard, watching the other ships sail, and then watching our departure from the balcony. It was too dark to really get any good pictures, but it was a lovely sailaway. On to our 5 sea days in a row!