Madeira 6.

Tags

Banana passion flower, Facebook, levada, Madeira, Nuns' Valley, pastel de nata, The Archers

Madeira 6.  Friday.  Not a very photogenic day, so quite a short post.

Two opt-in outings today, and I opted in to both.  In the morning there was to be a very gentle 6 kilometre walk  along a levada.  Levadas are water channels , 2500 km of them, irrigating people, crops and power sources, and they make for walks of various lengths and difficulties – and beauty.  This one had little to commend it, in my view.  It was crowded with three sizeable groups – ours was made up of people from British and French holiday groups – jostling to get away from one another.  The two levadas concerned had little or no water in them – it was not the season for irrigating crops (we were told by the excellent young specialist guide, Maria, coping very well in two languages), so the water was being kept up high to feed (water?) hydroelectricity. The countryside was really nothing more than agreeable to look at, and at times the view was of the backs of houses lining the path along which we walked. That said, I believe there are some absolutely fantastic hikes to be had for real walkers.

Called a banana passion flower, because its yellow fruit is like a squat, straight, banana with rounded ends. Not very like a banana at all in fact.

Dry levada, and walkers

 

I fell to talking with a Belgian couple from Brittany.  Among other things Micheline said that she and the rest of her party had been a little disappointed at how built up Madeira was.  I responded that I felt exactly the same but I hadn’t dared say so to others in my group.

In the afternoon just five of us went on what was rather pretentiously called a jeep safari tour.  We were joined by a woman from Germany who was good and smiley company.  Jokes over about there being no elephants (but see my next post) or tigers around, one of our number was disappointed that we were in built up areas for so long and that we did not spend more time out in the countryside.  But, outside the new main roads, tunnels and viaducts, moving around the island is extremely slow, for topographical reasons! Personally I found it quite interesting to spend some time being driven through little back streets that no coach could get to, and well, we did go off road for a couple of short periods.  Moreover, we saw the Nuns’ Valley from a different angle, and in very different weather conditions. And one of my companions, Charlie, an engineer, got very, very excited about the workings of another cable car.  And I had another pastel de nata when we stopped for refreshments – a much bigger one than I had seen before.

The grape harvest is over and the leaves are turning this gorgeous burnished colour

Sometimes it’s bananas, sometimes it’s grape vines

Optical illusion – that is not MY lower leg!  The fellow in the green tee-shirt is Joâo, our jeep driver and guide. Photo by Charlie.

The mountains round the Nuns’ Valley, heads in cloud.

Near Cabo Girâo

Cost, if I remember correctly, some 2 million euros, or was it much more? Anyway, it paid for itself in two years in tourist trips at 10 euros a time

 

Back at the hotel, I had worked out several evenings previously that it was possible to hear live, but not download, The Archers on Radio 4, using the wifi area in the lobby, so by now I had got into the habit of making sure I was there by 7 pm, listening, then looking at emails and – sorry – Facebook afterwards, before going up to the dining room on the sixth floor for my meal. I know, it’s pathetic.

Madeira 4

Tags

Curral das Freiras, Eira do Serrado, Funchal, Madeira, Monte, Nuns' Valley, Pico dos Bartelos, Toboggan

Madeira 4. This morning’s excursion was an optional one, and about half of us had chosen to do it. We were driven to the Pico dos Bartelos for a view over Funchal.

Now, a word about Portuguese pronunciation, especially of the Madeiran variety.  Our guide, Lina, was painstaking in her efforts to help us to understand where we were, especially for those of us, like me, who were trying to follow on a map, by saying the names very slowly and very carefully and very often.  Unfortunately she never thought to spell them.  Anyone, like my singing friends, used to Italian, or even Spanish, may be saying ‘Pico dos Bartelos’ in a certain fashion in their heads.  I thought I knew, from the itinerary for the week,  where we were headed for on the map, but when I heard – or rather couldn’t even make out – the words (this is the nearest transliteration that I can do, with hindsight) ‘PicoodoshVartewoosh’.  I thought I must be mistaken.  But I wasn’t.  Even the Portuguese pronunciation guide I had brought with me hadn’t prepared me for that!

Anyway, I was not over impressed, call me a Grumpy Old Woman, with the ‘beautiful’ view – too built up for me – so I concentrated on taking pictures of the lovely plants in the pretty little park at the top of this Pico.

including more of those pretty cobbles

We went on to the Eira do Serrado (Eira = barn-floor, threshing floor – but to me this was another Pico!).  From this very high viewpoint in the interior, we could look down the Curral das Freiras, translated as the Nuns’ Valley.  (There are various explanations for this name, so I’ll not bother with any of them here.) From the point where the coach left us, I walked up to the miradouro (viewpoint), 1097 metres (3435 feet) above sea level.

(Actually , I think I got this picture through the coach window, on the way up.)

Those are indeed villages halfway, and more, up the mountains.

Panoramic view.  This was in fact sort-of wrapped round me, which explains why the left is in the shade and the right in the sun.  We heard that the day before nothing of this could be seen because of the cloud/mist.

These were taken on the way down again to the coach, via a stop for coffee on the very sunny terrace.

Cool and mist-loving plants

From here we were taken down to Monte, which has a lovely church, visible from Funchal, especially when lit up at night, but I didn’t get a picture of it.

Though I did get this picture from in front of the church. In theory my hotel can be seen down below, straight ahead.

The touristy thing to do from Monte is to take a toboggan ride.  To quote from my Lonely Planet guide, ‘Toboggans were once the only way goods could be carried down Madeira’s steep and roadless landscapes, and the Monte carros de cesto are a relic of those days.’

No seat belts, no brakes, other than the drivers’ rubber shoes. The unfocussed lady on the left is our Madeiran guide, Lina

For safety reasons, the old cobbled roads have been tarmacked over.  We were told that this had taken some of the excitement out of the rides.  Ten minutes of the following was  excitement enough for me.

 

Imagine doing that for 45 minutes, all the way down to Funchal.

The toboggans and driver/brakemen are taken up to the start again, by lorry.

The coach took us back to our hotels, but I asked to be dropped at the seafront. Nothing was laid on for the afternoon, which I used for very different experiences, back up – and down – in Monte, but in a calm and contrasted way…