Man these trips go so fast! Some people in Madeira told us that ~”São Miguel only needs a couple days to see” and.. not true. Even spending two and a half weeks here we have been busy every day that weather and work permitted. We haven’t tried to get up early and rush from place to place, but we’ve been actively working through a constantly growing todo list. Today was our last chance to really do things so we targeted a few top items and just had an amazing day!

The day started like the last several days.. with Savitri trying to gain the affections of the cat who lives here.. and the cat making it clear that their relationship will remain on her terms. First of all, that’s her coffee to do with what she pleases.

Our first adventure of the day was a hike on the southwest coast, Rocha da Relva. Like so many hikes (and restaurants and anything else reviewable it seems), there is a mix of “this is awesome” and “this totally sucks” feedback out there. As far as we can tell the negative remarks are because it is a lot of steep climbing without a headliner waterfall or similar specific goal. The positive remarks (the majority in this case) are on-target though, as every step of this hike has incredible and varying views of the coast, striking geologic formations on the cliffs, and vegetation we’ve only seen in that area. It all starts at the top of a ~500 ft cliff.

As you can see in the AllTrails link, this trail starts at the top, splits right near the top, then you climb all the way down to the water in one direction, climb back up, then climb down to the water again in the other direction. So over 1,000ft of climbing overall. AllTrails seems to have a bad distance calculator btw, as they show this as 3.3 miles and Savitri and I measured it at more like 4 mi. My guess is that AllTrails uses GPS XY data only and ignores the Z component. With such a steep trail that adds ~20% to the length and there’s the difference!

Savitri has gotten remarkably comfortable walking on cliff edges. They just need to be wide enough and not slippery. I think we all agree with those, we just might disagree on the qualifying measurements.

During the first 30 minutes of this hike (going down to the base to the northwest) there were quite a few people. That is often a negative, but it also allows for connections and in this case we spoke for quite a while with a friendly guy from Croatia. He and his wife visit their apartment in São Miguel several times a year and he was super pumped to share his favorite findings and viewpoints.

Hiking along the face of a cliff means that there is always something going on down below you, in front/back of you along the trail, and.. on the wall itself. This trail is a geology course of its own.

Random cave. Different camera settings.

Savitri keep finding expensive New England annuals that are perennial wildflowers here.

Along the bottom of the cliff are numerous gardens and small buildings. We’re not sure how many are inhabited, but they certainly get a lot of attentions based on the health of the plants.

Savitri read somewhere that the cat population of this area outnumbers the human population. We suspect it’s not even close. There are cats everywhere!

The rocky beaches of Madeira and some parts of São Miguel are formed of golf ball to baseball sized rocks. These rocks stepped it up to basketball size!

Liza and I loved the sound of the rocks tumbling back into the ocean with each wave. Same here but the pitch is definitely a lot lower due to the size of the rocks!

I might be missing fall foliage..

Savitri scaring way the kitties.. to me.

Cool cats.

Back at the top after the long climb, legs burning a bit.. we turn and go all the way back down again to the southeast. That change in orientation exposes some new sights though..

Hell yeah I’m sweating!

This trail is a bunch of tight, steep, slippery (due to loose crumbled rock) switchbacks.

The wall is composed of a very different type of rock.

The bottom! A cute little garden with protective scarecrows.

…and a ton more cats! This one definitely took to me. It worked, I donated to the cat food donation bucket. Sucker born every minute.

Ok finally back at the top again and off to a late lunch! We went to Taberna Saca-Rolhas, a highly-rated restaurant that we thought was a casual lunch spot. Turns out.. not so much. It’s a very nice, elegant, full-service restaurant. They were kind enough to accept our sweaty hiking selves without batting an eyelash.. or at least not that we could see.

In a classic test of Savitri’s head vs her passionfruit sangria.. we’ll call it a tie. This thing was HUGE! Seriously if she had just drank that thing and eaten the entire fruit salad floating on top she’d have been full.

The menu is extensive, very enticing, and the waiters described the seafood with detail and excitement. That’s dangerous with foodies because it’s impossible to resist! We over-ordered happily and shamelessly.

Everything was outstanding. Every. Single. Bite. The ingredients were fresh, high-quality, and prepared perfectly. We’ve had some great meals across the two island on this trip and this is arguably the best meal we’ve had. The prices are high, even by US standards, but this is a place not to be missed. It’s also 5 minutes from the Ponta Delgada Airport. We saw a couple who grabbed a cab from the airport during a brief layover just to eat there.

We were so stuffed afterward that both of us were uncomfortable and needed a walk. We walked around the cute village of Relva.

Huge-ass spiders in some bushes!

This fountain seems more nipple-y than fountain-y..

We drove back to our place on the western edge of the island and changed for our last stop of the day, Ponta da Ferraria. This is a beautiful volcanic cascade of rock that forms the western-most tip of the island, 8 minutes from where we’re staying. You can tell that it is young rock since everything is pitch black and looks like it is still cooling. Well.. in fact.. there are still hot spots. The reason for going is the geothermal vents right on the edge that release steam into the air and heat the water in a small inlet. It gets to around 29˚C (84˚F) then mixes in with the ocean water which is a little cooler but the result is a great spot where people congregate around low tide to maximize the effect. As it happens, tonight low-tide was just before sunset, so we hoped to experience both at the same time..

The swimming inlet. There is a network of ropes anchored to the surrounding rocks to hold onto. This is important because the water is only knee to belly deep and the bottom is lots of rough rocks of different sizes. Each wave that comes in gets subdued at the mouth of the inlet, but still the water surge knock you around a lot.

Savitri joined me briefly but it was pretty rough. I chatted with a nice guy from Winnipeg for a while, and helped some unsure people work their way into the pool safely.

Savitri tracked some large red crabs on the edge of the swimming area. I’m glad they were on the rocks.

We watched the sun set over the waves with a stunning foreground of the blackest black.