Pictures from Madeira

Two photo albums from a week in Madeira: Part 1 and Part 2. Pictures with "madle-" in the name were taken with the Leica, "madlo-" were taken with the Lomo and anything else was taken with the Elph. Since the Leica was new and I hadn't had any pictures developed with it before heading for Madeira, I am impressed with just how good the photos are as it has been a while since I've used a fully manual camera. The Lomo pictures are a bit freaky as expected. A tip for photographers travelling to Madeira is to take plenty of film with you as all they appear to sell on the island is Fuji consumer grade film which made a difference in my pictures when compared to the Kodak and better Fuji colour film I had brought with me. A polarizing filter is essential for the landscapes during the daytime, too. I didn't have one for the Leica so there aren't many pictures of scenery.

Madeira is an island which lies approximately 660km west of Morocco in the Atlantic and is part of Portugal. The word Madeira itself means wooded since it was full of trees when it was discovered. Nowadays, however, it is covered with hotels and tourists. It also has the most moderate climate in the world with very little difference in temperature all year. The airport has one of the shortest runways used by commercial jets which was recently doubled in length by extending it on stilts to 2,781 metres. Jarkko wisely informed me of this fun factoid only after we landed.

Funchal is the main city on Madeira. I was disappointed that no tourist brochures proclaimed, "We put the FUN in FUNCHAL!", but I suppose that's too corny even for the usually silly tourist slogans that abound everywhere. We stayed in a hotel very near downtown which had a casino next to it that looked like the headquarters for Spectre. I suppose we should have gone inside the casino and had a look around but casinos usually only manage to fill me with the urge to run to the nearest exit with all the flashing lights and noise. This may be the result of all those years of late nights spent in dance clubs. It was a lovely hotel with a fine pool in the 1970s concrete school of architecture. Madeira would be absolutely nowhere without concrete since the local volcanic basalt is too hard and difficult to quarry for building stones. The sidewalks are beautiful mosaics with white limestone and black basalt chips arranged in geometric patterns. These do tend to get a bit slippery in the rain though.

The first thing I noticed after we settled into the hotel was the sound of the birds; big, squawking tropical birds filling the air along with little birds singing before sunset. Stray dogs are everywhere as well, but they are obviously fed by the locals as they appear to be well fed and healthy doggies living the good life. Surprisingly, I saw very few stray cats. Exotic flowers such as the bird of paradise grow like weeds all around the city and plants that would normally be tiny, wan, and pitiful things on your windowsill are gargantuan in this sub-tropical paradise. Christmas lights were everywhere and on everything that could be made to hold lights. I don't know if Funchal has the most Christmas lights of any city in the world, but it certainly looked as though it did. It takes Madeirans several months to hang all the lights around the city in trees, on bridges, on light posts, on statues and everywhere else. Funchal is also one of the cleanest cities I've ever been in which may be due to litter bins placed along the streets every 20 metres or an army of people sweeping the streets late into the night. I didn't see so much as a cigarette butt on the streets of Funchal. The streets are filled with lots of older tourists from the UK and the Nordic countries which made us feel too young for Madeira but too old for Ibiza.

Madeira is a very hilly island which the travel books and brochures really don't emphasize enough. If you walk anywhere it is likely that you'll be walking uphill or downhill with some degree of difficulty. Funchal is mostly flat unless you want to walk north of the city to one of the botanical gardens which is a bit of a challenge. We walked to the Botanical Garden which took about an hour and was, in some places, about a 45% grade. The weather is cool enough to make this a pleasant ascent in spite of the exertion. The Botanical Garden suffers from not being terribly well maintained so the reward at the top of the hill isn't equal to the walk but it still had lovely views of the city below. The cable car trip to the Monte Palace Tropical Garden is far easier than walking up the mountain and the garden itself is spectacularly odd and beautiful. I would have spent another day there given the chance. Jarkko somehow convinced me that taking a toboggan ride down the hill was a good idea and it was strangely thrilling in spite of my terror of careening down a mountain on a contraption with no brakes and whizzing around cars. It's a fun thing to do...once. :)

Unless you are a UK tourist looking for excellent curry or chips and egg while on holiday, the food on Madeira is sublime. The grilled swordfish I ordered one evening was nothing short of the best I've ever had. The local limpets fried and coated in garlic butter were fabulous as well. We were told to try the scabbard fish, Espada, with bananas as Madeira is the only place other than Thailand where you can taste this dish. The fish is delicious but it is best tried before you see the very ugly raw, whole fish in the market. It is caught at a surprisingly deep 800m and dies and turns black from decompression on its way to the surface. Giant round gelatinous eyes and vicious teeth also don't do much for the appearance of the scabbard fish. I don't like bananas very much but the local variety is smaller, sweeter and fresher than the ones in the supermarket and I loved a desert of bananas and creme caramel a waiter surprised me with one evening. One restaurant we took a special liking to was Arsénios in the Zona Velha which featured Fado singers, a stray named Bimbo and a chef with flair who knew his way around the grill. Portuguese wines were a special feature. We tried a green wine that is made from green [ not ripe ] grapes which makes the wine a bit tart and it has a lower alcohol content. There were carts all along the seaside that sold local foods like churros and chestnuts at all hours of the day and night. The chestnut cart generated quite a bit of smoke at times but it didn't appear to deter people from wading through the smoke for a bag. The chestnuts are soft, meaty and slightly sweet but should be enjoyed with a beverage close at hand since they will make you thirsty. Surprisingly, the local Madeira wine isn't pushed as much as I had expected. Madeira is a very sweet wine that is best suited to drinking after a meal with dessert. We tried all the varieties from dry to full sweet and I found the full sweet to be much more flavourful than the dry in spite of my dislike of sweet wines. The sunshine was nice in Madeira but the food was nothing short of fabulous.

The geography of the island is beautiful and varied. The mountains rise dramatically into a treeless plateau which is a striking contrast to the eucalyptus forest and agricultural terraces you pass on the way up. The roads are narrow and winding with steep vertical drops. It isn't a paradise for those afraid of heights. :) One of the more popular attractions for tourists are the levada walks; a levada is one of the many channels built to collect and carry the water from the top of the island to lower parts of the island where it is used for agriculture. There are also a number of tours around the island that are safer than hiring a car yourself and driving around the crazy roads. I glimpsed death more than a few times on the 2 tours we took around the island. A snag with the tours is that all of the tour offices are fronts for time share scams and they seem to prey on people from the UK and the Nordic region in particular. If you get caught by one of these grifters just say that you're German since they don't appear to be recruited for these 'opportunities'. Book your tours ahead of time or find a reputable tour operator before you leave. Also, avoid the bridge from the hotel zone into Funchal as I dubbed it 'grifters bridge' where they assail you on every pass. If you want to spend your holiday in the same place for the next 29 years, just buy a house there as it's cheaper and it builds equity.

Overall, Madeira is a lovely place to visit for a relaxing and sunny holiday with plenty of good food and drink to enjoy. We had a good time but if we go back sometime, I think I'd like to stay in a small hotel outside of Funchal and try more of the levada hikes and other trips around the island.

19 Jan 2004 at 19:27, Helsinki