Our first stop was Camacha (700m), which is the basket weaving centre. Here it was quite chilly but still sunny. In the factory, we watched 3 men and 1 woman making different items – as with all experts, they made it look so simple.
There were lots of pieces I really liked, but with luggage space at a premium, I only bought 2 small baskets.
Much of the furniture in the showroom is made by expert weavers from their homes in the town, and in the summer months, tourists can see them working in the back streets. Camacha is the first place in Portugal where football was played. In 1875, the English son of a local resident brought a football back from his public school, and taught others how to play. A garden now stands where this first pitch was with only a commemorative plaque to mark the spot.The island is now football mad, and has 2 teams who play in the Portuguese Premier League. They have to fly to Portugal for all their away games, and the other Portuguese teams have to fly to the island for the home games. As they share the very modern stadium that has recently been built, they take it in turns to play, so there is a home game every week.
After Camacha, we went off the main roads westward onto rough country roads lined with acacia and mimosa trees, which have only started to bloom, but already look very pretty. (I know they have yellow flowers and you know that isn’t my favourite colour, but, yes, they do look very pretty in their natural settings!) The roads are rough because further up the hill, there is a soil treatment plant. This soil from the fertile upper slopes is cleaned and sent in huge lorries down to all the public gardens all over the island. As soon as we passed this plant, the road improved. We were now climbing into the start of the clouds but as yet they were thin and didn’t detract from the views.
On the far side of the valley were what I thought were a lot of dead trees. These are young sweet chestnut trees and they do not start to produce foliage until February. After they are harvested in October, a Chestnut Festival is held. We had a piece of chestnut cake yesterday when we stopped at Curral and the Madeirans also make a strong liqueur from the nuts.
The trees around us now were smaller firs and more acacia and mimosa. Still climbing, we reached Poiso at 1413m, then climbed further, now in low cloud so we couldn’t see anything much, to Pico de Areiro, 1818m.
There are meant to be fantastic views over most of the centre of Madeira from here, but we had to take Josef’s word for this as we could only see about 20m in front of us!As this is a dead end road, we turned and drove back down to Poiso. The vegetation on this higher ground is very scrubby with mostly heathers, gorse and ferns, similar to parts of Scotland and Wales. Some of the best honey is made by the bees that collect from this area and the land around Curral das Freiras.
Now we continued our trip northwards to Ribiero Frio, where the itinerary had a short walk planned. No chance! By this time, it was p**ing down, so we just had a coffee stop in the village, which is no more that a dozen houses. It does have a trout farm so we had a quick look at that
then into the warm hostelry for a lovely cup of coffee beside an open log fire.
There were lots of walkers around who had given up and were awaiting transport. Who wants to come to Madeira to walk in the rain when you can stay at home and do it more cheaply!The next stage of the tour was continuing north up and down the San Roque de Faial valley, where we left the narrow main road and set off down an extremely winding single track, between houses (some were really only huts or hovels) all with terraced gardens growing all kinds of vegetables and fruit. There were some very nice properties interspersed with the hovels. Josef told us that these were mainly built by returning immigrants, many from Venezuela, but some from Russia and Eastern Europe.
A short history lesson now, so you can miss this bit out if you like! According to Josef, in 1931 the islanders rebelled against Salazar who tried to drain the island’s resources for his own gain. As a punishment, when Salazar, a fascist, became Portugal’s Prime Minister in 1939, he virtually abandoned Madeira and left the Madeirans to their own devices. Many emigrated during the 48 years of his “reign” to Venezuela, South Africa and Australia. When the army staged a coup in 1974 and the fascists were ousted from power, these emigrants started returning to Madeira and families who had been left behind. Many of these now are recultivating land that had been allowed to go wild. You can see from the overgrown terracing how much was once there. With all this new produce, Madeira now is self sufficient in nearly all the fruit and vegetables consumed and mainly it is the women who look after the gardens.
Forestation on the hills here is mostly eucalyptus, brought in from Australia and thriving on the island. The trees are only used for telegraph poles as the wood is too brittle to be used for much else.
At Faial on the north coast, we stopped at a viewpoint which was once a small fort protecting the inhabitants from the pirate raids.
Faial is built in the shadow of a huge outcrop called Eagle Rock and the viewpoint is on a promontory opposite the rock. As we have come to expect, the views were amazing – yes, it had stopped raining and we could see in the distance again! We were due to have lunch there, so put in our orders, then set off northwest to the “city” of Santana. The largest settlements on the island have been given “city” status in order to be able to claim funding from the EU for the interconnecting roads and tunnels that have transformed the transport system. Pictures of Santana always show their traditional “A”shaped thatched cottages, so we were expecting to see lots of them. Not so! We saw about a dozen altogether, and could only get into 2 of them.One belongs to a Madeiran who emigrated to Venezuela and when he returned to reclaim the property he’d left behind, he lived in the A frame house while he was building a more modern one at the rear.
The A frame house still retains the original furniture from that time, and looks as though it’s still being lived in.
(In fact, judging from the smell in the tiny bathroom, it just might be!!). We gave him a contribution, in return for which he gave us a drink of very potent home made coffee liqueur and a biscuit, then insisted on showing us round his garden, which was actually fascinating.
All kinds of plants were crammed in so that wherever you looked, there was something different. He had lots of beautiful orchids, including a tiny flowered one which had the most delicious scent. Unfortunately, due to the language barrier, we couldn’t find out what it was called apart from “orchid”! He had a custard apple tree in one corner and gave us a large custard apple from it, which he said would be ready to eat in 2 days – so I’ll let you know the verdict!The other “house” we could enter, was one of an immaculate pair, landscaped prettily and looking almost brand new.
This was set up as a workshop for a lady who weaves traditional Madeiran cloths on a hand loom, but she didn’t speak English and there was no literature either about the houses or the weaving, so I was disappointed. Apart from that, we saw nothing in Santana of interest. As with many of the smaller villages, poverty is quite prevalent with many empty and derelict houses, and land left wild.Back on the road to Faial,
we took the recently constructed new road through one of the innumerable tunnels. According to Josef, there are 146 tunnels here, with more planned. Lunch was at the Restaurant Grutas where we had pre-ordered meat as our main course. Fish was brought instead, so there was a short wait while they cooked our steaks, but they were very good when they did arrive. The restaurant is inside a cave
– warm in winter, “fresh” in summer as it was described to us. We had traditional cabbage soup for starters (delicious) and what we thought was a crème caramel (CC) for afters. Tom loves CC so tucked in with gusto – for one mouthful!! It looked like CC, it even smelt like CC, but it tasted like it was made with something like semolina, quite stodgy and with a very strange tasting sauce, which I think may have been passion fruit as there’s a lot of that here.Having been satisfactorily filled with food and wine, we took yet another winding road to Porto da Cruz where we stopped at a viewpoint to look back at the other face of Eagle Rock. An attempt was made here to persuade us to buy plants and seeds at some roadside stalls – the stallholders were quite pushy and we think Josef had an arrangement with them, as he dropped us off by the viewpoint then drove to the other side of the stalls, forcing us to make our way past them. We did buy some strelitzia (bird of Paradise) seeds, as we had already decided we’d like to try growing some in the conservatory. They tried to persuade us to buy all sorts of other seeds, bulbs and plants, but we weren’t interested, so they weren’t very happy about it. Tough!
Back in the bus again and on to Portela, the gateway between north and south. Then on to Machico on the east coast, where we went round the town to the north and east to a lookout point where we could see the Airport and the only bit of real sand, which Josef said has been imported from Morocco.
We watched a couple of planes take off after which we drove north to Canical, where the new container port and Industrial area has been built. All container ships used to come into Funchal harbour, and there was a huge container park right in the centre of the city, with lorries continually loading and unloading right where the cruise ships docked. The decision was made to move the commercial port to Canical, which has a sheltered location. It had the dual advantage of freeing Funchal from the heavy lorry traffic and providing employment in a very impoverished area. Canical used to be the whaling centre and with the ban on whaling, there were no alternative jobs so unemployment was rife. 5 years ago the port was opened and an entire new industrial area has built up around it. This forms the eastern end of the system of new roads and tunnels serving the north and south and with the planned extensions of infrastructure at the west end, there will eventually be a complete loop around the island.Our last part of the sight seeing day was to drive out almost as far east as you can drive on the island, to the Sao Lourenco peninsula where we were treated to spectacular views along north and south coasts.
Driving back on the Via Rapida to Funchal, you pass under the extended runway of the airport, built on 172 concrete stilts as they had already used all of the available land. According to Josef, there has only been one aircraft accident on Madeira (before the runway was extended) caused by a pilot attempting an approach in visibility below minimum. Over 100 people lost their lives when the plane hit the vertical lip at the end of the runway, broke apart and fell into the sea. Only 2 people were saved, a baby and a young boy, who still lives on the island but has never recovered from the trauma of losing his entire family in the crash. We’ve bought postcards of the airport with the extension clearly visible, and as Tom says, he would not wish to lose an engine at a critical stage as there is NO room to manoeuvre. Left or right, you choose the rock face OR the ocean!
No wonder our pilot wouldn’t attempt the landing in less that 5km visibility.As the traffic was heavy, Josef came off the Via Rapido and wended our way back via the old roads, seeing a little more of the old Funchal on the way. It was a long and interesting day, marred only by the fact that we couldn’t go on our walk and we couldn’t see the stunning views from Pico de Arriero that are shown in the guide books. No dinner tonight – we’re still stuffed from lunch – and I wonder what the stroppy German lady did all day?!?
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