Canary Islands Cruise – Madeira
(Yes, I realize how behind I am on travel posts, but with Copenhagen, Australia, Seattle, and India, I’ve pretty much been busy non-stop since we got back from this trip!)
Our first port en route to the Canaries was the Portuguese island of Madeira. We decided to join up with fellow CruiseCritic couple David and Amanda, since they were planning to see many of the same sights as us.
One of the things we really wanted to do on Madeira was to try the famous toboggan ride down from Monte. With over 3000 fellow Voyager passengers all exploring the port, we were worried about being stuck in a crowd, so we made sure we were some of the first people off the ship and on the first shuttle to town.
We took the ship’s paid shuttle bus to the center of town for $5/person one-way, and it dropped us off conveniently across the street from the Monte cable car station. It turned out that we arrived at about the same time as another group of passengers we knew from CruiseCritic, who’d taken a taxi into town. Divided by the four of them, their taxi fare was less than our combined shuttle ticket costs. Live and learn. It turns out that in most of the other ports, even when Royal Caribbean was offering a paid shuttle into town, the city’s tourism industry had provided a free shuttle at least to the port entrances. Conveniently, Royal Caribbean only mentioned the free shuttles in ports where they did not run their own paid service!
I had researched Madeira and Funchal before I left home, and according to the website for the cable car, they didn’t open until 10 am. I assumed that if we wanted to guarantee that we reached Monte before the rush, we’d unfortunately have to skip the cable car. However, they apparently open early on days when there are cruise ships in port, so they were running by the time we arrived. The trip up was surprisingly long, so we had plenty of time to enjoy the lovely birds-eye views of the city and of the ship docked in the distance.
When we reached Monte, there were only a few other people around, so we took our time and strolled around a little. We took some photos looking back down towards the city and visited the church. Then it was time for the famous toboggan!
Lucas and I piled into our toboggan, snapped a few photos with our unsmiling toboggan drivers, and were off. Basically, you just go careening down the streets in a semi-controlled slide, often ending up a bit sideways. It’s not really all that fast, and it’s not really all that smooth. Halfway down the hill, our drivers stopped and rewaxed the wooden runners on our sled. It didn’t quite live up to the hype, and it was expensive (€20, I think), but it was still fun.
At the end of the toboggan ride, we stopped at a souvenir store (I bought a pair of thick wooly socks. Not very tropical, eh? I’ve found that my taste in souvenirs has changed a bit since moving north!) and then haggled with a taxi to take us around the island for a while. In the end we settled for €60 with an itinerary including the scenic lookout at Pico dos Barcelos, Curral das Freiras (Nun’s Valley), the village of Camara de Lobos, and the Cabo Girão sea cliff.
We took a lot of photos at Pico dos Barcelos, and then piled back into the taxi for the winding ride along the narrow cliffside roads up to Nun’s Valley. The valley is so deep that looking down on the tiny roads and village below was pretty spectacular. The weather up in the hills wasn’t as clear, so we faced a little bit of drizzle but were rewarded with a beautiful rainbow over the valley! After more photos, including a few straight down to the valley floor (to terrify acrophobic Anne back on the ship), it was back to the cab.
The road to Camara de Lobos took us through some of the areas that are covered with banana trees, which our driver pointed out, but the village itself wasn’t all that interesting. We stopped in a local market to buy some of the famous local bananas, and then found our way to a nearby winery to try some authentic Madeira wine. This was the only winery I’ve ever seen that offered “self-serve” tastings! Four varieties of Madeira were on offer in small labeled barrels, and you just poured as much of each as you wanted into your glass!
Our last scheduled stop was the Cabo Girão sea cliff, one of the highest sea cliffs in the world. I think it would have been interesting to look down from the top, but we got only the side view. It’s quite a cliff, and photos don’t really show the full scale. By this point our driver was starting to feel like we’d taken more than €60 of his time, so we obliged by piling one last time into our taxi and heading back to Funchal for lunch.
We had a relaxing al fresco meal with some great food, including the local specialty, which was essentially “meat on a stick.” The inner cavemen in Lucas and Dave were pleased when the waiter brought us a tall iron apparatus that was later hung with large skewers of grilled beef. My inner gourmet was pleased when I tried it!
After lunch we decided to walk back to town and enjoy the sunny weather. Our destination was the big local market (Mercado dos Lavradores), and as we asked for directions en route, every person told us it was 10 minutes away. For three quarters of an hour, we were consistently 10 minutes from the market! But we finally reached, and found on offer the most amazing assortment of unusual tropical fruit I’ve ever seen. Eager to make a big sale to the visiting tourists, the vendors gave us sample after sample of mangoes, papayas, and half a dozen different varieties of passion fruit!
And laden with a week’s worth of produce, we found our way back to the shuttle stop and caught a bus back to the ship.
March 12th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
I’m surprised you didn’t compare lunch to a Churrascaria, since you were in Portugal. Simple forgetfulness I suppose.