You always
can get things working. I don’t know why always being that late. When booking
the flight tickets to Madeira, the Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean, only
2 days has been left before the designated departure date. And all that although
we had scheduled our holidays for that particular week quite some months in
earlier.
Anyways,
the flight was okay, too long though, and quite bumpy when approaching the
Funchal runway. Strong winds were making the landing pretty much challenging.
From left to right, up and down – the pilot must be accurate preventing to
overshoot the too short runway. He managed perfectly.
We picked
up our checked in luggage and went to the rental car counters. As we have
placed an order just the previous day, we now noticed it has been refused. It
was high season, and we were not the only ones asking for a car those days.
Luckily, we found a car dealer having one left, overpriced for sure, but better
than nothing.
The first
days we have booked a half pension countryside hotel. Not too bad and well
located – everything in the east could be reached within 30 minutes maximum. Fisher
villages and rugged coastlines were inviting for hiking or walking tours, just
to wander around a bit.
The trip to
the highest mountain (Pico Ruivo) was almost a bit too much. The track was
going up and down all the time, stairs and loose stones made it even more
difficult than the midday sun alone. But on the other the landscape offered great
views, cliffs, gorges and deep and widespread valleys.
We spent 4
more days at the west coast as well. The hotel (O Farol Residencial) at the
most western point, the light house, was located far off anything else. It was
family-run and people were really friendly although some language barriers. The
food was just excellent (the tuna especially) and talking to a French couple
was made it even more fun, with or without the local drink Poncha. Really cool
and relaxing time, a bit of everything.
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