Madeira - First Look

To write about my impressions of this island last night would not have been fair, given that the car ride from the airport was at the end of a very long travel day and we had very little idea of where we were going.  The instructions on google maps was direct enough, but translating that into the reality of the road system and signs is difficult at best when you don't know the language or the layout of the land or the transport system.  Add to that a 3rd dimension since many roads go up and down frequently and roads which look parallel on a map are nowhere near each other when you are driving them, and you get a difficult drive.

However, today we left the car in the parking garage and set out on foot.  The roads are still up and down, but more manageable and the map makes more sense now.  We walked toward the centre of Funchal, past the cruise boat dock and the marina.  Roads are sometimes carved out of the side of a cliff and the exposed face a tortured and twisted record of volcanic rock formation.  There are palm trees and all the tropical flowers you would expect at this latitude, but snow is visible on the top of the mountains of the interior which peak through the buildings.  The lady at the tourist info told me that it actually snowed up there last week and many people drove up to walk in the snow.  But it wasn't snow which made the sidewalks slippery -- but a light shower (forecast said 10%) on the paving stones.  Put that together with a steep grade and one is quite thankful for the handrail on some of the descents.

This is a tourist town: littered with restaurants offering tourist menus, little supermercados are on every block, always beside them are the obligatory souvenir shops with hats and tshirts and all kinds of knick-knacks with Madeira  printed on them.  Ian read that a million visitors come each year.  Menus outside restaurants are printed in about 6 languages. There are hotels and apartments on all the cliffs with lovely balconies facing toward the sea.  You can rent cars, bicycles, e-bikes, quads, motorcycles, Twizzies (unusual little 4 wheel item from Renault), Spiders (the 3 wheel motorcycle), Smart cars and many small vehicles I have never seen before.  Most of the people you pass on the street are retired English speaking folks, though there are quite a few Germans as well.

But there is a local side to this place.  I walked past municipal garden II -- a series of small plots of land, each with a little numbered wooden shed.  I recognized cabbage, banana, papaya, hot peppers and lettuce greens.  The soil seemed very fertile and mostly still growing stuff at this time of the year.  We saw fishing boats in the harbour -- along with kids in a sailing school and some training kayakers.  We will certainly keep a special lookout for how the locals live.