Madeira visit takes fun to new heights
There are many ways for a visitor to get their kicks in the hometown of soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo
FUNCHAL, MADEIRA — It’s a white-knuckle ride — inside a wicker basket.
Sliding down the narrow, serpentine, steeply pitched streets of Funchal, the island capital of Madeira, two men in hats and outfits reminiscent of Venetian gondoliers huff and puff as they pull me past parked cars and shuttered homes and small groups of tourists, momentarily shocked, and then bemused, surprised by the sight of a grown man sliding down a mountainside in what looks like the basket of a hot-air balloon.
Picking up speed as we careen around a jackknife turn, the ropes slacken, the men in a full run now, no longer pulling, now simply trying to hang on.
Picking up some moisture from a recent rain, the basket plummets down a particularly steep portion of road, at one point threatening to break away from the men before we slow down, hitting a level straightaway, the final stretch of the course. Walking us into a small parking lot, one of them seems to read my mind.
“Wow,” he says, sotto voce, shaking his head. “Wow.”
Set about 500 kilometres off the coast of North Africa, the island of Madeira is closer to Casablanca than to Lisbon, and is an autonomous region of Portugal. Here, taking a ride in a “sledge car” has been a time-honoured tradition since the 19th century, when farmers used them to ferry their produce to the coast (smiling tourists replaced fresh fruit once the first hotel was built on the island).
Long a tourist destination, with its subtropical climate, Madeira gained some notoriety in North America after renaming its airport after 30-something soccer star (and hometown boy) Cristiano Ronaldo, commissioning a bust that made international headlines for being comically bad, looking like a goofy funhouse mirror reflection of the mega-celebrity.
My first task: take a selfie with Ronaldo’s statue. Then, after a walking tour of the labyrinthine
streets of postcard-perfect Funchal, which cross-cross the flanks of an 1,800-metre mountain, I quickly head inland with a company called Green Devil.
Shifting hard as he drives our jeep deeper into the green hinterland, guide Hugo Vasconcelos turns to me with a serious look.
“Are you afraid of heights?” he asks, without irony. “Do you get vertigo?”
When I answer in the negative, Vasconcelos seems relieved. Before it was a vacation destination, bringing sun seekers by the thousands from Northern Europe, he notes that this island was wild. Not so long ago, trips to Funchal used to take four hours. Now, with the help of tunnels and improved roads it takes just 45 minutes.
“With all the tunnels, this island is like Swiss cheese,” he says, with a smile.
As we leave the ribbon of concrete for a rough, unpaved passage that climbs, seemingly, almost vertical at some points, Vasconcelos steers us back in time. He traces a route that drops off precipitously — sheer, all the way to the water, with no barrier at all, and I understand why he asked his earlier question.
Driving hard over rocks and rushing streams, soon we’re in the heart of a laurel “Laurissilva” forest, one protected by UNESCO that dates back as far as 1,000 years. We eventually reach an altitude above 1,500 metres — above the clouds.
Dropping back down the other side, we pass bunches of bananas so close that I could pick them out the window, with Vasconcelos actually stopping to pick eucalyptus leaves and rosemary.
Soon, we’ve descended to Porto Moniz, a seaside town teeming with tourists. As we order lunch, pasty-skinned Scandinavians dive into a series of black-rock pools below us, the waves crashing as the heaving mid-Atlantic tide rolls in, just beyond the calm, protected waters.
Like other islands in the region, Madeira is a volcanic outpost in a vast ocean, once a way station for seafarers, traders and explorers alike.
While beaches beckon, so too do fleets of catamarans, which spirit visitors by the boatload off the coast to experience the area’s aquatic charms. On one such trip, I marvel as both striped and common dolphins and loggerhead turtles swim right past our bow.
And while I enjoy the charms of Funchal, strolling the waterfront and gawking at the outsized statue of Ronaldo in front of his museum and dining at panoramic restaurants up the mountain with the lights of the city like stars at my feet, the hinterlands soon call again. Another Cristiano calls, a local guide (last name Caldeira) who invited me to join him at a country house for a barbecue.
At first, it looks like all is lost. I arrive in a taxi at an agreed-upon meeting place, and Caldeira’s not there. After some awkward, apologetic waiting with the cabbie, Caldeira rolls up, in a rush. Packing me into the passenger seat of his small, red hatchback, he rockets like a Formula One driver up the side of the mountain, us switching to a four-by-four jeep for the final push up a difficult gravel road.
We ascend to a lovely cabin in the clouds, one crowded with family and friends. They welcome me warmly, and I fold into the festivities, carried on in a fairly even mix of English and Portuguese. We dine al fresco, sitting on tree stumps on meats cooked on an outdoor grill, as well as pao de queijo, a local specialty baked with bacon, onion and three cheeses.
The party finishes down in the nearest village, where we down a couple ponchas, a strong cocktail traditionally consumed by Madeira’s fishermen in the hopes of keeping warm. (“Be careful,” Caldeira tells me. “They say that after three of these, you’ll leave speaking Portuguese.”)
The conversation and jokes flow with the rum and, out here, in a little roadside bar, I realize that islanders here have been doing this for centuries. Of course, some things — feasts, and friends, and the final drink of the night — are timeless.
Tim Johnson was a guest of the Madeira Promotion Bureau, which didn’t review or approve this story.