Another perfect Madeira day-

written by Roni

 

We went up to the mountains. Madeira has a web of irrigation canals called Levadas, which means “to take”, the water from the mountains to the agricultural areas. The island is laced with walking trails that follow these canals, and are also called levadas. Taking Joanna’s advice, we went up to the green levada. Even as we started driving up the mountain we couldn’t hold back our excitement as we drove the ever narrowing road through the lush, green, flower specked woods. Up to 990 meters, where we started our walk. The woods are so green, with an abundance of trees and ferns and water, water everywhere! Your ears slowly learn to distinguish between the different sounds that the water makes. The flowing water in the canals, the water dripping through the ferns, the rain falling around us, the waterfalls running in and around the canal. As we walked, the clouds came in, enveloping the trail with a white soft, thick shroud, and it felt like walking in an enchanted universe. I’m positive that there were fairies in that wood, and probably even dwarfs, as we passed through tunnels dug into the volcanic mountains, some long enough for us to use our flashlights, trying to avoid bumping our heads as we walked alongside the flowing waters. At the end of the trail we reached an amazing fern mountainside, with a 60 mts. Waterfall. The scenery was very primal, almost Jurassic in nature, and very extraordinary and overwhelming!

After drying off in Monte, a suburb of Funchal the capital of the island, we drove down to the city, checked out the main marina, deciding it wasn’t as good as the out of the way marina we were docked at, then to a restaurant where we had a great fish dinner and some live Fado music.

Enchanted forest, fish, wine and Fado – nothing much to add to make this a perfect day.