West Madeira and The Mainland 😀

So as the adventure continues on Madeira Island we took a taxi tour of the western portion of the island. We went to a beautiful fishing village. We also had a chance to sample some original Madeira wine, which is a port wine type of beverage, extremely strong. During our visit, we crashed a party of Danish tourists and ended up doing a wine sampling and had it all explained to us in English, which was pretty cool and the Danish people were nice and friendly although a bit shocked that four Canadians suddenly joined their little group. 😀

The trip continued, and we went up some pretty impressive hills and up into the mountains where it’s pretty high up without a better explanation than that. What a view. 😀

Basically, the road took us to the northwest corner of the island and when you come down over the hills, you run along the ocean, which is a combination of tunnels and roads, and our taxi driver, who was awesome pointed out some of the old roads. Holy shit I wouldn’t know how anybody could drive them and not die. He was telling me that that’s where they used to drive out to when he was a kid. Very brave people.

We passed some pretty neat waterfalls and there’s these swimming pools that are natural. Some are the kind helped along by man but it’s pure ocean water. We hi went to a black beach where Rory and Susan both touched the water. Myself and Monika are more sensible. 😀

Our taxi friend made us a reservation for lunch and we sat in a really nice restaurant and had a wonderful meal overlooking the thrashing waves onto the lava rock. Very cool. It’s amazing how one island the two sides are completely different. 😁

After our wonderful lunch, there’s a small castle fortress right there on the coast that we got to explore and on the return journey, we stopped off at this very picturess volcanic rock blasting out of the ocean and went for a little walk in a cave. Again, the drive coming down those roads with the ocean beside you in a lot of ways similar to the Oregon coast that we drove down a couple of months ago 🤠

As we’ve been touring around in Funchal there are some very interesting streets. One of them is lined with restaurants and it’s a small old street but it’s full of doors that are painted in colours and characters and a fun thing is to walk along and check them all out because they’re so unique. Rua de Santa Maria is the place. Local artists were asked to paint all the doors and there’s over 200 of them. It’s also very unique because they bug you to have lunch or dinner at their restaurant or at their restaurant or at their restaurant and we did have lunch or dinner at a couple or three of them but it’s like being the centre of an auction 🤓

One of the last walks we took before we prepared for a departure is it an area we hadn’t really gone to before and there’s a really cool old castle right beside the water. This castle was built to fight off the pirates back in the day and is right beside us swimming area, where we watched insane people go into the water with these massive waves. Some of the waves came up onto the patio where we had some adult beverages. 🤠

Overall, our observations of Madeira Island are absolutely wonderful and we hope to visit again as it’s a beautiful place especially in January when the average temperature is 22° We only had rain one night and now that we are on the mainland I can report that it’s pouring on island for the next two days. Same here on the mainland oh well there is no windchill 😁

We had to spend the evening getting packed and cleaning up our apartment because we all got up at 6 o’clock in the morning to take our flight to the mainland and that’s something nobody around here is good at doing except me. 😀

A great flight to Lisbon and a nice drive in our new Peugeot SUV thing down to the coast to our new base in Albufeira. It’s almost a 3 Hour drive from Lisbon and it’s a lovely area to hang out even though basically everything’s closed cause we’re here in the winter but if last night meal is anything will have a perfect time.

Keep up with the adventures as we’re having a great time checking it out and that we enjoy that you folks read our blog

Thanks again and cheers from Portugal