Out & About in Madeira

As neither of us have visited Madeira we were keen to get to see a bit more of the island and as the marina is a bit isolated we hired ourselves a car. After an eventful bus journey to the airport (the marina had told us the wrong bus but helpful bus driver arranged for bus driver to drop us off close so we could walk!) we knew we were going to have an action packed day! Why whenever we have a car do we try to do as much as possible!

First was to drive east and north, the main road ran up through a ravine, mountains  as high as 1000m surrounding us were almost alpine but not quite with the palm trees and exotic plants scattered across the hillside. First stop Sao Vincent, pretty village on north coast but not much to see, 5 minutes walk around and back in the car.

Cobbled street in Sao Vincent

One of the main reasons for driving this way was the north coast road which run west, some of the original old road exists which is on the side of the cliff and provides spectacular views.  It was once a 2 way road but now you are only able to drive west and it does occasional join the new road if you need to get off or where rocks have closed the road.  The views were amazing and driving under a water fall is a first for us!

Road along the cliff edge with the the wave splashing over the sea wall

Car under waterfall

At one particularly exciting part of the drive we struggled to drive through the tunnel in first gear and during the roll back down the tunnel the seatbelt held you in place!

From the top of the tunnel

View along north coast

Looking down the ravine from car on tiny bridge!

After about 10-15 km of this spectacular drive you reach Porto Moniz which is a small tourist resort and whose main attraction seems to be the rock pools which fill up and you can take a dip which did look pretty inviting but again this was only a brief stop.

Rock pools at Porto Moniz - there are people swimming in these

We then started to climb and head south, after about 5km of hairpin bends you reach Paul da Serra which is a mountain top plateau at over 1000 m,  By this time the beautiful sunshine we had on the coast had disappeared and we were sat in the cloud although we were able to see the roaming cows!

The surroundings were so different from the coast, with gorse bushes and ferns, it felt like you could be in the highlands of Scotland or the New Forest

Mark having a look around in the cloud!

Our plan was to walk one of the levadas – the levadas are Madeira’s irrigation system of which there are 1400km around the island, they transport the water from the mountains to the valleys, some of these were built centuries ago which is even more surprising when you see they have built on the side of the mountain hundreds of metres up and often work their way through the mountains with tunnels which can be over 100m long.

We drove to a place called Rabacal and firstly had to walk about 1.5km down hill on the twisty road to reach the levada, the carpark area was filled with hire cars! Even though it was raining! So out with the waterproofs and into the rain cloud.  We walked a few kilometres along the relatively flat leveda to reach the Risco waterfall.

Glad to be in the dry under the trees walking by the levada - see the big ditch running next to  Amanda

Difficult to capture the water running off waterfall but there is!

Mark drenched but happy at waterfall

After hike back up the hill to the car we continued our drive across the plateau which was pretty exciting as the road stood a few feet off the ground and you could hardly see in front off you.

Where does the road go!

But before we knew it we were on our way back down the mountain in the laurels and the pines.

Sudden change of scenery

By the time we were leaving the coast there was another change of scenery and we were surrounded by banana plants. 

Hundreds of banana plants

Busy day but really nice to see the changing landscapes and weather of the island.