We arrived in Funchal at 9 pm, picked up our rental car, and made our way to our hotel. After a long hot shower, we slept like rocks.
The next morning, we woke up early, ate breakfast at the hotel, and then hit the road to explore. We headed west and just decided to go as far as we could around the perimeter of the island. Of course, we ventured to every steep, winding road we could find for epic views. The week before we arrived, the northwest side of Madeira had some terrible wildfires, but some recent rain thankfully put them out.
By lunchtime, we arrived in Porto Moniz at the farthest north point of Madeira. It was the most beautiful, sunny day, so we ate outside overlooking the crashing waves. We checked out the tide pools and eventually continued along the northwest coast.
We climbed up above the coast for a bit and then found the entrance to an old tunnel where the original coastal road had been but was closed due to rock slides. It was basically like Madeira's version of California's PCH...I guess the ACH. No long ago, Madeira constructed a major highway across the island that was made up mostly of tunnels through the mountains and bridges across vast canyons. It made for quick travel, but didn't offer much for sightseeing. There were several places where you could see the old road but couldn't access it so we were excited to get down there and see what we could find. If you have followed along on our travels, you will know that we love to go to secret spots that maybe we shouldn't be going. There wasn't much much to deter us from parking, walking into the tunnel and exploring to see where it led, so we did!
It wasn't long before the weather began to turn and it got quite windy, cloudy, and cold so we decided to head back towards Funchal via a 2-lane road through the center of the island. Before we knew it, we stumbled upon the famous Laurisilva forest that is the largest remaining ancient forest of it's type in Europe! It's 1.8 million years old and was designated a UNESCO Heritage site in 1999. It's almost always foggy and was so beautiful and quiet and beautiful...it was the kind of place where you feel like you need to whisper to show respect. Most of the trees there are between 500 and 800 years old! We wandered among the gnarled stumps that looked like sculptures in the mist and the moss.
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| I think this was my favorite tree that we saw <3 |
After a couple of hours, we made it back to our hotel in Funchal, cleaned up, and then walked through the Old Town to find dinner. We settled on Ramen and the coziest little spot where they had the best Boba we've ever had. We ended up going back to that same restaurant 3 different times over our stay!
We packed so much into such a short time there...I'll write more about it in another post, so stay tuned!