Today we made the most of the day and drove around the whole island! We had breakfast at the apartment to save time & money and to make it healthy. No exciting pictures but it’s definitely easier to start off the day with a simple meal at “home” than a big restaurant production. We did get some good early morning views from the porch too.

Apple peers take note.. I use Organic Maps (free, global, offline maps!) for most trip planning. I find the bookmark handling and use of the latest OpenStreetMap very helpful. At the same time, I use Apple Maps for Guides information and for all vehicle routing. As a result I constantly switch back and forth between the apps. Let’s call it “immersive research”. Anyway… here’s my current Madeira bookmark/checklist. I create red points with notes as we learn about them and turn them blue once we visit them. Idiot-proof. Today we visited all the blue dots outside of Funchal!

As soon as we drove off we were reminded that these roads are STEEP! Liza got out and measured the hill shown below as having a 19˚ angle (34.4% grade), and we drove an even steeper one nearby. Pictures do NOT tell the whole story though. The bumper touched the pavement at the base of this hill.

Our first stop was the Cabo Girão Skywalk, a scenic lookout on the edge of the Cabo Girão cliff. It’s 589m (1,932 ft) above sea level, although other signs say 580m (1,902 ft).. I’m going with the biggest sign! The lookout platform is part open metal grid and part glass bottom.

For you 3D nuts out there, I’m playing around with stereoscopy again and started using i3DSteroid. It’s the best stereo pair “facilitator” I’ve found to-date. You need to either use a stereoscope to view them or, as I’ve done, learn to focus your eyes on infinity (parallel) and POP it’s 3D! This is different from the spatial photos Apple now supports, which integrate the stereo view into a single file but require a special viewer to see in 3D.

Next stop.. Levada Nova Waterfall walk. This was highly recommended by Nunos car rental, and especially of interest to us since it’s short and flat, so a good test for our group with our various broken parts. It’s a .6 mi out & back, so 1.2 mi in total. The waterfall was described as cascading over the trail into a swimmable pool below.

The trail follows a levada, which is an irrigation ditch. In this case, as with many others, it is in a stone or concrete channel. There are apparently hundreds of them, spanning thousands of miles, criss-crossing the island. This one was filled with water from the waterfall, and mostly open-topped. It follows the contours so was very flat, and gave us a great view of the valley it flanks.

We got to the waterfall and.. it turns out that while the walk was pleasant and interesting, the waterfall was not what it used to be. The water flow was low, enough to feed the levada, but little else. We expect that flow varies wildly based on the amount of rain of course. They have also closed the portion of the trail under the waterfall, likely for safety purposes.

We returned to the car, spotting lizards and humans around every turn.

We then dropped down to the coast to Ponta do Sol to find some food. Ponta do Sol is a small village, but has several restaurants and a popular beach.. err.. well.. Madeira style. Lots of rocks.

We went to The Old Pharmacy for lunch, a quirky ~tapas style place. They have breakfast/brunch options then mostly cheese plates, tapas, and pinchos (here meaning little cooked tapas dishes).

The star of the meal? Mint lemonade! It was PERFECT, with fresh lemons and fresh mint blended and sweetened just right.

The food was quite good, and as you can see we neglected to take pictures before diving in. Always a good sign!

After lunch we visited the Dos Anjos Waterfall, known for cascading directly onto the road before draining into the ocean. However that portion of the road was closed and the water was pretty much just a trickle.

We continued west along the southern coast to Miradouro do Fio. This is a prominent scenic viewpoint 315m (1,033 ft) above sea level. You don’t stand on glass there, but the solitude of this viewpoint and its simple railing made it a real eye-opener.

We then turned north to Porto Moniz, know for its natural pools. We decided not to swim.. this time, but it is a beautiful spot and was very active.

We skipped the beach towns of Seixal and São Vicente, which Savitri and I will likely return to, and drove to Santana. Santana is known for its historic thatched huts, and we went to the biggest cluster of them around city hall.

We also checked out a little farmer’s market nearby.

Just before we got back to the apartment, we ended up driving on the highway UNDER the airport. We knew the highway went under the runway, but thought it was a simple tunnel. It turns out that a large portion of the runway is on pillars! It’s an amazing sight which we’ll try to photograph better next time we drive under it.

Speaking of tunnels… a big theme during the day was the massive Madeira tunnel network. It was our first real understanding that driving in Madeira means driving in tunnels constantly! There are apparently now 153 tunnels across Madeira, with lengths up to a couple km. They are carved out of basalt and so numerous that a long drive often feels like you spend more time underground than above. The benefit is that using tunnels saves a ton of time. They make the whole island accessible within a couple hours, versus surface roads that take two or three times that long.

We ended the evening by going to a restaurant at the base of the hill below the apartment, Só Espeto. They specialize in skewered meats, but had a variety of other dishes. As with most Madeira meals we started with a local garlic bread, and this was the best one yet. The salad was average. They were nice enough to make a mint lemonade (yes we were addicted earlier in the day!) that was good, albeit nowhere near as good as the one we had at The Old Pharmacy.

We got two skewers of steak (one boneless, one bone-in) and Riki got a big baked cod entrée. The meat was very tasty but also fatty.. and the cod was also very tasty but had a lot of bones. Presentation seemed to be a big part of the meal and we were more impressed by the appearance of both dishes than the eating part..

We retired to dessert at home, unusual for us but a relaxing end to a long and eventful day!