Madeira Day 3

On our 3rd day, we got up for Breakfast and CBC went to go and pick up the hire car.  We decided to make sandwiches from the buffet to take on our walk.  We got in the car and drove to do walks PR10 and PR11.

The first walk was a mere 3km total called Vereda dis Balcoes. It was super easy and accessible on a wide path that was pretty flat. 

It led to a viewing platform with wonderful views of the mountains around. We soon noticed people feeding chaffinches from their hands. Clearly The Madeiran Chaffinches love a Picnic. 

It didn't take long for me to lure my own chaffinches with a bit of sandwich. A few of them are from my hand whilst fluttering and the more audacious and greedy ones sat on my finger hoovering up every morsel. 

Despite them being comfortable if anyone with food held out a hand, it felt very special to have a tiny bird on the hand. 

Once we'd stayed here a little while, we walked back to start of the route. There was another route in the village. Pr10 which was longer.  Around 11km. It went along the Levada Do Furado.  It is one of the oldest public levadas, acquired by the state to irrigate the agricultural fields of Porta da Cruz.

Many of the walking routes follow the Levada, historic water ways. The routes can be quite narrow in areas and you will be next to a sheer drop but they have metal railing erected. 

The walk was pleasantly shady as it was overhanging with trees, however, the walk did not feel particularly varied as the view was hard to spot, there was little variation in ups and downs. 

A highlight of the journey was reaching a waterfall with a mesmerising clear pool. A man was swimming in there and we were tempted to go in too. In retrospect, we regret not doing this. 

Levadas. The walks are very safe as they have railings. However, a lot of the walk was the same.

Possibly the most exciting part of the walk was walking through the rock face!

The final 1.5km of the walk was downhill (finally some variation!) We ate our picnic lunch in some lovely shade before the descent.  It ended at the Portela belvedere in the municipality of Machico.

The views were beautiful from there.

We found a yellow taxi waiting there at the who drove us back to the car in Ribiero Frio! We were very thankful he was there!

Once we got back to the car, we decided to drive to Santana to have a look around. It was said to have examples of a typical Madeiran traditional house.

There were a few of them.

In one of them, they had a small shop selling a few things including ice-lollies from a natural company.  CBC had a pineapple and mint one.  I had a Strawberry and chocolate lolly. It was covered in a thin layer of crispy dark chocolate and had a fruity inner of real frozen strawberry pulp.  It was really tasty. We stopped for a cool drink in a nice cafe/restaurant. I had a non-alcoholic version of Poncha (punch with passionfruit and orange) and CBC had a bear.

As we sat there, I was admiring the beautiful archictecture of the hospital

We decided to have Dinner in Santana and there was a  Pizza restaurant with a very noisy parrot near the car. CBC had a pizza and I had some sort of tasty steak with fries and a beautiful rainbow salad.

In the car on the way back, we passed through many tunnels, long ones at that! We got back around 9pm so I decided to go for a swim FINALLY in the hotel pool. It was very pleasant. I then booked for the next morning.  They told me it had to be before 9am as they had swimming lessons then which seemed a bit annoying but I was happy to book for 8.30am.