Funchal & Câmara de Lobos, Madeira
Walkabout has gone Sailing
Andrew and Traci Roantree
Sat 25 Sep 2021 20:07
It’s sad saying goodbye to places you haven’t fully explored! But today we say farewell to Madeira and head to Lanza (Lanzarote).
We arrived on the Island of Madeira Thursday 27th having sailed from Porto Santo, a mere 40 nautical miles and approx. 8 hours on the Atlantic. A pod of dolphins swam and played beside the bow as if to wish us farewell and fair winds!
It was an eventful sail in the end!
We raised our twin headsail (BlueWaterRunner) and realised it was rigged incorrectly! Then we lost one of our lines over the side and under the boat! And to top it all off, our wind instruments decided to stop working! All this when the boat is rocking from one side to the other in a rather large sea swell!! It’s was a little challenging at times but great fun all the same.
Here is Andrew at the top of our mast fixing our wind instruments. Yup, it’s a long way up …
Our destination was Funchal and we were very pleased to arrive!
Funchal is the capital and largest city of Madeira which, geographically is located on the African Tectonic Plate and sits on a massive submerged volcano, rising about 3.7miles or 6km from the bed of the Atlantic Ocean.
We loved Funchal and below is a list of our first impressions:
-so very colourful
-beautiful paved walkways
-friendly people
-surprisingly steep streets
-amazing engineering, the bridges and tunnels are mind blowing!
-incredible views from the mountain tops!!
-not a place for road bikes 🤣
Oh and one other thing, Madeira’s most famous son - Cristiano Ronaldo! There is a statue and museum just outside the marina. (Not sure it looks much like him…!)
There are number of cable car rides around the island one of which is in Funchal. Once at the top you can catch one of the Monte Toboggan Sledges and ride 2km down through the narrow streets. 2 men guide, pull, steer and brake the sledge as it hurtles down the hillside. It reaches speeds of 30k/hr. It was a thrilling ride!
The first sledges originated in the 19th century as public transport by local residents who wanted to travel quickly from the village of Monte to the city of Funchal.
It is one of those things like Ottery’s Tar Barrels - if someone came up with the idea these days they would be laughed at or locked up. But because it is a tradition, that makes it ok!!
We do like a walk, so we decided to walk up to Monte where the sledges started instead of catching the cable car like most people!! I guess that the fact that there is a cable car indicates it is quite a climb. We can report that it is a very tough walk, just up through residential streets. Various cars stopped to offer us a lift - I don’t think many people walk up. But we made it - 1900 feet of climb in about 3 miles. To put it politely- we needed a shower when we got back to the boat.
We had planned to spend more time here hiring a car for a few days and heading high up into the mountains. Exploring a few of the many guided lavadas walking trails and seeing first hand the incredible terraced hillsides covered in the ever changing fruit crops!
But the weather is our guide and with the wind picking up towards the end of this week we lifted anchor at 1100 this morning alongside Helen & Steve from Cerulean and both set sail for Lanza.