Marvelous, majestic Madeira!

Why visit Madeira?

Ronald Smit
Globetrotters
5 min readFeb 3, 2022

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Somewhere back in 2009, when we had a week to spare for a holiday, my wife suggested a trip to Madeira. I was originally not so keen: This Portuguese island in the relatively cold Atlantic Ocean, West of Morocco and far to the North of the Canaries, is not the typical beach paradise with white sands and coral reefs. And since many greengrocers in South Africa, where we grew up, appear to originate from Madeira, I was expecting a rocky island dominated by vegetable gardens.

Well, there was certainly a lot of (volcanic) rock, more about that later. But I was not prepared for the beauty and variety offered by the island. Let me prove that to you.

A view from the cableway over Funchal, looking down on the city, the harbour and the Atlantic Ocean.
View over a part of Funchal, the capital, as seen from the cableway up to the botanical gardens.
View of the fruit and vegetable market, lots of colourful fruit and vegetables on display.
The market in town offered a great variety of fruit and vegetables, including many types not known to us.
View into the very clean fishmarket, black scabbardfish on display.
If you like fish, this is a good place to be. This very clean and very well-organized fishmarket in Funchal was the right place to buy bacalhau or fresh black scabbardfish, the latter seen at the bottom of this image.

Personally, I am not a great lover of fishy dishes but I did very much enjoy the Madeiran signature dish of scabbardfish fillets with banana, yummy!

Lady at a flower stall, in between a great variety of flowers.
Flower stall in the weekly market in Funchal, showing only a small sample of the various flowers that we saw all over the island and in the botanical garden.
Fountain in the botanical garden, including a little waterfall and a little cherub that looks like Belgium’s Manneken Pis, but seated on a turtle.
One of the ornamental ponds in the botanical garden. No, the Manneken Pis lookalike is not wearing a mask — it’s just the sunlight on his face. And he is not an exhibitionist, he seems to be sitting on some sort of turtle fountain.

This island is just fantastic for anyone who likes walking. Naturally, there are many steep slopes (and they are very steep!) but there are also very many walks along the routes taken by the levadas. These concreted water channels run along the contour lines around the island, taking rainwater from one side of the mountains, to the other. They are almost perfectly horizontal, so that the very very gentle slope allows water to flow slowly. And the footpaths along them allowed walkers like us to also stroll at a relaxed pace. Following them through valleys and across ridges, they offered us ever-changing views.

Forested hillsides and an irrigation channel running off into the valley.
Strolling alongside a levada into a green Madeira valley.
Opel Corsa parked on the side of a road, view over the Atlantic Ocean, behind.
We’d rented this little Opel to get us around the island. The rental company had tried to convince us to take a larger car with a stronger engine (“We have steep mountains here…”) but that proved totally unnecessary.

The little Opel Corsa was just ideal for that week. It easily took us everywhere (the roads were excellent) and it was good to have as small a car as possible. I remember a drive through one particular village when we had to take some side roads because the main road was blocked by a church procession: Priests with incense leading a large crowd of people, some of them carrying statues of saints, etc. Certainly no place for a little car with tourists to squeeze through. Anyway, we diverted through some interesting parts of the seaside village, on roads that got narrower and steeper. Eventually, there was literally less than a handbreadth separating the bodywork from the houses on either side. Faced with yet another turn on an incline, we threw in the towel and reversed, which was also quite challenging! There was no alternative but to return part of the way and wait for the procession to end. We did that, and took the opportunity to take in the view and to take the following picture:

View of volcanic rock jutting into the ocean, seen through a maritime monument (idealized little boats on wavy metal strips) and over a border with flowers.
Very symbolic image from Madeira: Volcanic rock jutting into the Atlantic Ocean, a monument to the maritime history, and a selection of flowers. Oh, and blue skies, we did have quite a few of those too.
View down a steep mountainside, towards hotel below, also the shore and the Atlantic Ocean. Lady relaxing in the sun after the steep climb.
View from a rather steep climb up the mountain, over our hotel below. My wife is acting like she is catching some sunshine, but she was mostly catching her breath.
Sign stating “danger” in multiple languages.
In my family, such signs are not seen as a warning, but as an invitation!
Man and woman in front of a little waterfall, with volcanic rocks behind.
… and after accepting such an invitation, you get to experience sights like these.

The island of Madeira is the top of a shield volcano that rises some 6,000 metres from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. We can therefore only experience the top 25% or so. It’s had a complicated history, starting some 100 million years ago. Various phases of volcanism were interrupted by some quiet times with sedimentation. The last known time of active volcanism was some 6,500 years ago, so I guess we are now enjoying some of the more quiet times in the island’s existence, long may these last! More about the Madeira volcano on this website.

Volcanic headland jutting into the ocean.
A panorama picture taken at Sao Lourenco, the eastern tip of Madeira. There’s some rather dramatic geology: The broad dark rock bands are mostly basalt (lava flows) and they are separated by narrow reddish bands that indicate quiet times when soils started to form on top of the lava flows. The vertical structures that look like ladders are dykes formed by magma feeding other lava flows higher up (now eroded away).

The volcanic soils on this island, combined with the high rainfall, are clearly very good for the plant life, of which we saw a beautiful variety:

Gum trees looming through the mist over a road.
Driving along one of the many excellent roads, massive gum trees looming in the mist.
Pink, white and purple orchids with yellow highlights.
Orchids in gardens everywhere.
Green and yellow orchids with red highlights.
… and just to prove my point, some more orchids.

Although many seafaring nations (including Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians and Arabs) must have passed by and maybe even landed, it appears that Madeira was uninhabited until 1419 when the Portuguese landed.

Old iron naval cannon overlooking a village between the mountains.
Some old naval cannon overlooking this village, presumably placed here for decorative purposes. Getting these heavy iron monsters up here from a ship must have been quite a task!
Coastal town with white buildings, red-tiled roofs, black volcanic rock and beach.
Typical seaside town, facing more or less towards the Southwest, over the black volcanic rock/sand beach, towards the Atlantic ocean.
Sunset in orange and red over the dark blue ocean with steep mountains rising out of the sea.
Sunset over the Atlantic. When faced with a view like this (as with all sunsets) I always feel sad that another day is gone, but happy to have experienced it. Wonder if we’ll ever be back there? I hope so.

That visit to Madeira is already more than a dozen years in the past, unbelievable. Writing this story and sharing the images has brought the memories closer again and I hope it’s given you a brief opportunity to “travel” as well.

But if you ever get the opportunity to actually travel there, you must go. If you’ve been there already, let me know what your own thoughts and experiences were!

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Ronald Smit
Globetrotters

Husband, father, geologist, consultant. I love travelling and learning, sharing feelings about all that, sometimes funny, always positive.