The Morning After

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, not really. It was dark. Night is usually like that. It did rain a little for the first time since I've been here. The rain had stopped by the time I was ready for my morning walk, but the sea was still looking a bit moody along Formosa beach.

Bananas

The levada nearest to where I'm staying isn't the prettiest of them. Much of it is a bit suburban, but if you walk west, it quickly turns rural. It's still not very pretty, but there are occassionally some great views down to the ocean, and there are lots of banana plants.

Funchal City Square

I haven't spent much time in Funchal's old town on this trip. I got to know it well on my last visit but this time I'm staying far west of town. I thought I would spend some time there today, to check out some shops.

Machico

Madeira is actually pretty big. Much bigger than I realized before I visited the first time. That means there's a lot to see, but it also means you have to figure out how to get there. The town of Machico wasn't even on my radar before this trip, but I heard about it and figured out how to get there.

Tunnel

Thanks to the levadas (irrigation weirs), which sometimes have to go through hills rather than around them, Madeira is no stranger to carving tunnels through the basalt that makes up most of the island. So, when it came to connecting up the cliff-top ocean walk with Formosa Beach, carving a pedestrian tunnel through about 100 yards of rock was no big deal.