Madeira Day 6 and 7 and 8

On day 6, we decided to make a walk which was not too far away from where we were staying.  The route is also a fairly easy one.  The route was PR8 Vereda Da Ponta de Sao Lourenco.  It is on the eastern-most peninsula on the island and is named after the caravel sailed by Boncalves Zarco, one of the three discoverers of the Archipelago of Madeira.  It is part on the Madeira Natural Park and the penisula is partial nature reserve ce.  It had a very different feel from the other walks we had done so far.  There are supposedly colonies of seagulls and other birds species. It is 4km there and another 4km back.  

Given its proximity to Funchal, it was obviously quite popular with lots of tourists so the carparks and roads leading to the start of the walk were heaving. It was also a different walk as it was quite exposed since it wasn't surrounded by trees.

It was lovely to see the sea and bays at many junctures.

I loved all the flowers we saw.

We reached the end of the walk and here you could go kiyaking or take a boat trip out to see dolphins or take a boat back. We decided not to but I enjoyed seeing the turbulent waters.

More flowers...

As we neared the car, we saw some really interesting rocks which looked very much like fossilized creatures!

We drove back to the hotel and I decided to go for a swim. To my chagrin, there were swimming lessons going on for the next two hours for a bunch of little kiddies and I couldn't use it!

CBC and I decided to try and go out for a meal locally and CBC found a place that was very individual, had a tiny menu.  Sadly, I cannot remember its name.  Weirdly, as we drove to get there, all of a sudden, I started to feel really queasy.  As we looked at the very meaty menu (game and that sort of stuff), I couldn't bear the thought of eating anything! CBC thought I was sulking because I wanted to go elsewhere but it was so strange that I felt so odd.

He ordered stuffed mushrooms

He then ordered me the beef stew.

And a salad for us.

I managed to eat a bit of salad and about 2 pieces of beef but it was a real struggle. At this point, CBC started to realise I genuinely didn't feel well and nobly ate most of the stew.

We headed back and I got into bed feeling utterly awful, my tummy felt terrible and I felt sick.

In the middle of the night, after many hours of grasping my tummy, I made my way to the toilet and then lay on the floor outside the bathroom. I felt like a change of scene might help me.  CBC came and made me go back to bed.

It was a long night.

In the morning, I was very slow getting up, still feeling very unwell.  CBC wanted to go to breakfast and hurried me up.  Just as we were about to leave, all of a sudden, I knew I had to be sick and ran for the loo.  After 6 times throwing up, I think I'd expelled whatever was irritating me.  CBC headed off for breakfast and left me behind to lay down.

After this, we decided to head out to walk.  Despite having felt so unwell and not having any food inside me, I felt it was probably best just to get outside. We headed to the north-east of the island to the PR6 trail, Levada das 25 fontes.    Waterfalls were to be involved.

It started raining heavily as we did this walk.  The first part was on road and it was quite a popular route.  We made our way along and reached the waterfalls which were lovely.  After around 8km walk, we came back and found a lovely cafe in the woods which had a massive queue. CBC and I managed to find a table. Sadly, the only thing I felt like eating was soup and they had run out of that so I decided to give it a miss.

I don't have any photos sadly!

Once we were back to the car, we decided to drive up to the northern coast to Porto Moniz where there are natural saltwater pools on the sea.

To our delight, once parking, we discovered, as it was around 4.30pm, the pool was free to enter though there were no facilities to use to change or store things.

I did a sneaky changing manoeuvre in full view under my sarong and changed into my tankini.

As I entered these breath-taking pools, it was the first time all day I felt well.

It was blissful!

We drove home, after a walk around town. I should mention at this point, that wild nasturtiums grow absolutely everywhere in Madeira and I took the opportunity to collect some seeds

When we got back to Canico and got changed, having not eaten anything, I needed something to eat so we went out to La Carbonara which had an extensive pizza and pasta menu.  I ordered a lentil soup and a half portion of Spaghetti bolognese which was absolutely enormous!  CBC ordered a meal which he didnt realise had chicken in it.  His flexitarianism doesn't include chicken so he was very sad.

The next morning, we went for our final Buffet breakfast and then packed up our things. As our flight wasn't till 5ish, we left out stuff with conceirge and walked down to the sea front in Canico via the supermarket...

 

Where I picked up this epic bag of Pick and mix crisps! I love foreign crisp trying!

I was pleasantly surprised by the beach there. It was stony but the sea looked clean and  I wished I had come to swim here when I couldn't get into the hotel pool

If it hadn't started raining and I had no towel, I might have swum.

I sat and read my book on the beach until we had to shelter in the nearby cafe because of the rain.

I doodled on some stones.

We made our way back towards the hotel, passing monster aloes.

Beautiful flowers and lots of sea food restaurants which we wish we'd known were there.

I love the street signs on Madeira. Like lots of the municipal walk ways, they are beautiful!

CBC downloaded the Bolt App and we got a very cheap ride to the airport in a yellow car.  Public transport would have taken 1.5 hours. This took 10mins!

At the airport, I marvelled at the myriad tins of sardines for sale!

We'd had a wonderful holiday in Madeira and were so grateful to have had this time away together, away from the anxieties of real life and work!

We got home around 12.30am, via the X30 bus and a taxi and then I was up for church the next morning at 9!

xx

Madeira Day 5

 Our 5th day in Madeira began similarly to others with a late breakfast and making buffet rolls. 

We decided to head to the route of PR1 which starts at Miradouro do Pico do Areeiro.  This is one of the best known walks as it connects the two highest peaks of Pico Ruivo and Pico as Torres and Pico do Areeiro and is part of a central mountainous area.  Sadly, due to landslides and other safety issues, the whole route is currently shut and there are fines imposed for anyone caught trying to traverse the route past the cordons.  We decided to do the 1.5 km of ti which is open before going onto another walk.   

We parked alongside the road in a safe spot as the carparks looked very busy when we arrived.  We walked up the hill and came to this observatory.  There are some great views here.

It was definitely the most touristic walk we did.  There were many people on the paths, some of them slow, some of them faster

Despite all the people, we enjoyed what views we saw.

The walk was quite steep in parts and harder because of the people coming in both directions especially when it was narrow.

We reached the barrier where you could walk no longer and looked longingly at what lay beyond.

We headed back towards the car but had a look in the gift shops which were really quite fun. I was tempted by some lovely cotton hoodies with tasteful Madeira logos and also some beautiful 100% wool jumpers but resisted. 

CBC started driving us to our next location.  I asked him where it was and he said, it was an unofficial route along a Levada in a remote village.  When asked how he heard about it, he said that he was looking at Google maps and saw it marked and someone had commented that it was one of the last unspoilt, untouristic routes but asked people to give it a 1 star rating so it would remain that way!

Intriguing!

We made our way really quite far out and up some very quite roads until we reached a tiny village.

Already, I knew this was going to be special if a little....unsafe...

Here was a view of the place from the car

We climbed up a very unofficial looking path through some allotments and past a pig sty.

And there, we found the levada looking very natural...no official paved paths or railings. 

We could have gone left or right so we went right.

Immediately, this felt more interesting than the other levada (and in retrospect of all our other walks in Madeira)

The flora and vegetation was already more interesting with these beautiful flowers.

I was fascinated by what I saw.

There was lots of this lacy, delicate foliage which I reached out frequently to brush my fingertips against.

The path felt so much more edgy and exciting than the previous levada.  CBC was heading towards a gentle waterfall here that you got wet having to walk through.

As it was April, I'd been hoping I might see some interesting fungi, particularly a Scarlet Elf Cup again and to my delight...here I saw one!

Let's zoom in a bit.  It was a miracle I spotted it!

We saw many of these succulents in various stages of maturity.

The views, when we could see, were utterly wonderful! I felt like I was in Peru!

At this point, we had to walk through the rock face, through a tunnel to continue!

 This is with my flash! It was really dark in real life!

On the other side were more glorious views!

More of the succulents.

And yet more interesting flora.

And more fungus. Delicate and lacy.

At this point, we encountered a problem: A landslide!

CBC decided to check out how secure it was to see if we could continue and make a circular walk.  I was muttering all sorts of dire thoughts of accidents and not following the hiker's code!  He climbed up and over and told me it was fine! I was extremely apprehensive!

I made it up and over with lots of exclamations and an extremely muddy bum.

We continued and then encountered our second problem: a river with no way across except some far apart rocks and a branch blocking the way.  My dire mutterings became anguished "It's not safe! Let's turn round!" and it wasn't till CBC tried to remove the branch in the way and slipped and fell, that he agreed! It was sad as we really wanted to complete the circular walk but agreed that perhaps it wasn't wise!

As we walked back, I looked at these glorious views again.

Back at the car, we decided to walk down into the village as CBC had read that there was a swimming spot by/in the river.  This caught my interest of course!

We were walking through the vineyards to reach the river and passed some villagers. It didn't look very affluent and I imagine people live a simple but difficult (but probably very happy) life here.

Sadly, we couldn't see a safe way down to the river so we reluctantly returned to the car.

We decided that on our way home, we would like to go to one of the recommended Skewer restaurants to try the famous Madeiran skewers that we missed from our home town. The ones we had the other night were not a Skewer house restaurant but a general restaurant.

We traversed the most ridiculously steep and outrageous route courtesy of Google Maps which the Fiat Panda struggled with to reach O Lagar!

It was a vast restaurant which was virtually empty when we arrived but was filled to bursting within about 30mins of our arrival.

The menu was really quite small and had no veggie or fish options to CBC's sadness. He had to opt for meat (he's pescetarian but is occasionally flexitarian). 

We started with the wonderful Bolo do Caco with all its garlicky goodness.

Thank goodness we shared the beef skewer as it was enormous!

We had a salad, skin on fries and rice...which turned out to be pretty dull as only plain rice.

The dessert menu was absolutely enormous full of all sorts of really exciting ready made desserts (which I might share in another post) but CBC and I opted for the homemade ones. 

I had a chocolate mousse.

It had been a brilliant day but very tiring with a lot of driving for CBC so we decided the next day, we would stay closer to home...

xx