This is Madeira. Whilst being geographically closer to Africa, this Portuguese island is
only 2 hours from Lisbon and has earned the somewhat justified nickname, of the Hawaii of
Europe. Spreading across this 35 mile footprint, you’ll be spoilt for choice with waterfalls,
volcanic mountain peaks, seaside towns and the alluring city of Funchal, complete with
a Cable Car and not one but two stunning Tropical Gardens. If you’re new here, then welcome. We make
travel movies from around the world, hoping you might just find your next holiday inspiration.
This is Suitcase Monkey spending 4 very different days on the island of Madeira.
Situated in the South East, Funchal is a great base for exploration and the most populated
region in Madeira. With settlements dating back to the 1400s, Portugal dominated world trade for
centuries, and Funchal was an important stop from Europe to the Americas. Today, that trade is most
easily observed at the local Farmers Market. The atmosphere, colours and smells here are fantastic,
and it’s a great place to grab a snack and just watch the world go by. Friday mornings are
definitely the best time to visit though, where every stall has their best foot or fin forward.
Signs of Madeiras roots are also best displayed at this fortress.
Built in the 1600s, it was Portugals response to the
numerous pirate attacks that had brought devastation to the area.
The most noticeable attraction in Funchal though is definitely
this Cable Car which dominates the skyline around town. Over the space of 20 minutes,
you’ll gain 540 meters in elevation, along 3000 meters of sloping steel.
But as the rustic reds are gradually replaced by leafy greens, it’s easy to assume we took
this car for the views alone. But this welcome distraction was actually just
a mode of transport that brought us to the tropical gardens of Monte Palace.
Monte Palace started as a beautiful stately home,
eventually turned into a lavish hotel and now, it’s a centrepiece surrounded
by some of the best landscaped gardens I’ve ever walked through. Now, it’s safe to say,
we are suckers for this sort of attraction but it was one of my personal highlights in this trip.
Later that day, we returned back to our hotel for a well earned breather. I’ll link where we
stayed in the description and card popping up now if you want to check it out. But overall,
it was great, the staff were really helpful, they provided a free shuttle bus to Funchal,
which was only 15 minutes away. Or you could just take the local buses that ran every 5
to 10 minutes. I’ll cover more travel tips such as getting around the island at the end of this
video. Normally I like being in the centre of town, but Funchal wasn’t going to be our
only focus and you obviously get a bit more for your money here. One of the best priced
rental cars I found was only a few minutes walk away so was convenient for collection. Tomorrow
we’d be taking our new car for an hours drive, for a day of hiking and hunting for waterfalls.
Our first hike was an easy to moderate trek, depending on how
far you want to push yourself. You’ll see the word levada a lot here and it refers
to these narrow aqueducts that carry water across the island. Over 3000km of public
and private waterways connect Madeiras water supply from source to its final destination.
But the way Madeira has integrated this usually mundane water system
alongside its hiking paths has turned them into an attraction themselves.
Madeira then, is a hikers wet dream with 30 official routes in total, and they all start with
the letters PR. This was PR6 and is one of the more popular and also busier hikes you can take.
This popularity obviously has some downsides with the number of people, but on the plus,
it does allow for this beautiful coffee stop before you really get going.
With our bodies fuelled, we laced up our boots and headed towards our final waterfall…
Despite the beautiful scenery we’d seen here today, we’d no idea what was coming up,
but made sure to take an early night. Tomorrow would be an early wakeup,
as we raced to catch up with Madeiras stunning sunrise.
Driving in Madeira is relatively easy for such a hilly twisty land. And believe me,
the roads can get bendy. I swear I have never seen anything like this on my GPS before. I’ll
cover a bunch more tips for driving around and Madeira at the end of this end but at its longest,
driving east to west, it’ll take about 90 minutes without stops. But there are enough
scenic points along the way which means you will be applying the hand brake at some point.
One such pit stop was this totally non touristy waterfall. Whereas yesterdays had heaps of
people behind my camera, this one we had all to ourselves so was much more peaceful because of it.
With our stomachs rumbling for lunch, our final visit for today, was this small town
along the north coast. Settlement here was tough back in the 15th century,
given the areas steep valleys and harsh seas. But the legend goes that Saint Vincent of
Saragossa appeared in a rocky cove at the mouth of this river and so this chapel was constructed.
Hopping back into the car, we relaxed at our hotel for the rest of the afternoon,
already lamenting that tomorrow would be our last full day here.
There’s always that bitter sweet feeling on the last day of a holiday. Although this was
day 4 of Madeira, it was the 9th day of the trip, as we’d flown directly from Lisbon,
which you can also see on this channel. But I always enjoy the familiarity when
returning to somewhere that once felt foreign. Our final day in Funchal would
be somewhat of a greatest hits tour but the new highlight was undoubtedly this.
As its name suggests, this is much more of an actual botanical garden,
as opposed to the landscaping delight we visited on Day 1. Despite this,
the grounds are still really well laid out and the diverse collection of almost
3000 species of exotic plants, make it feel different enough to while away a few hours.
We could easily have spent a week in Madeira and given its relative closeness to London
and a much warmer winter climate, there’s a stronger than usual chance we will be back.
I want to finish this video with a bunch of travel tips I picked up along the way to help with anyone
thinking of visiting this beautiful island. But if you did enjoy part 1 of this video,
please leave a like and comment below, letting me know your thoughts. This really
helps the channel be suggested to more people, making videos like this more likely in future.
So let’s first just round off the point I started a moment ago in that we could easily
have enjoyed a week here. I had heaps more saved on my map so if we did have more time,
these are the other places I was interested in. If you’ve been to any of these, please do let us
know how they were. I obviously can’t vouch for any of them so don’t @ me if they suck big time.
For our morning extravaganza, we got there about half an hour before sunrise which was about right.
We were travelling in the shoulder season of October so I’m not sure how much more busy it
gets in the summer, what with parking and so on but there was plenty of space for us arriving at
that time. It’s right in the middle of nowhere so aside from an expensive taxi journey, if you
don’t have a car, there is a service that will pick you up from your hotel, drop you off at the
start of the route, then collect you at the end, 10 kms away, once you’ve finished the full hike.
I’ve linked the pick up service in the description and card popping up now if that suits you instead.
This PR1 hike is THE big one in Madeira but do be aware it’s only for intermediates and above.
We just walked the first 30 minutes of the route, and then headed back,
so I’d recommend that if you don’t want a full days trek. There’s also a pretty
nice cafe here serving super warming food, and acts as a nice breakfast.
As for the waterfall hike, we just pulled up near this location on Google Maps, and there
was a pretty large area for leaving the car. For this hike, we just used the All Trails app,
following the PR6 route, but again, I’ll link the specific map in the description
below. The route is supposed to be circular but it started to get really tough on the last third
so we just improvised and made a shortcut back. Despite the romanticised version of how I edited
this video together, don’t be misled with how busy the last waterfall might be. This is one
of the more popular hikes as it’s pretty family friendly so just be aware of that.
As mentioned, I really liked our hotel. It was the perfect place to relax and call home,
and most our evening meals were just a walk away. Everything was clean and as you’d expect,
the staff were really helpful and the shuttle bus into Funchal was super convenient. We did
once use the public transport into town and the buses arrived every 5 minutes or so and
then take about 10 to 15 minutes into town. As usual I’ll link the hotel in the description and
information card which supports this channel if you book any hotel there so thank you in advance.
For public transport, as you might expect, bus stops do look like bus stops but to be clear,
this is not a bus. It’s a car. The buses actually look like buses,
much more like a bus would back at home. Which makes it much easier when flagging them down.
On the last day in Funchal, we did buy a local day pass bus ticket,
which was only €5 and also got us up to the Botanical Garden. We bought the day pass at
this mini station in the centre of town. You can just buy single tickets as you board the
bus though and they were around €2 euros for a single. Buses were perfectly fine in Funchal,
frequency wise, but I’d imagine they get less so the further away you move.
That’s why we ultimately decided on the rental car. The best combination of price,
car availability and location for me, was 7M Rent a Car.
There are a bunch of branches around Madeira but our branch was literally minutes from our hotel.
I found the best price just booking direct on their website. It was €138 for 72 hours,
which came with included full insurance and a specified automatic transmission, which does add
money on to the price. I can drive a manual but with all the hills, it was 100% the best decision
to pay extra for automatic as it made getting around so much easier. It was also my first
time driving one of these mini smart cars too, and it was so incredibly tiny and easy to manoeuvre.
As mentioned in the Lisbon vlog, do check out The Fork app for deals when dining. Our last
nights meal was really good, and what would have been €90 turned into €60 so it is worth a look.
The next travel vlog will be coming to you from Finland, for an extra special holiday, and then
yes, I will eventually get to Canada I promise it will be worth the wait. For those who missed the
update, YouTube is currently my full time job so you can hopefully expect big things in 2023, when
it comes to travelling and sharing those journeys with you. Thanks for watching, Suitcase Monkey.
So maybe it could actually be the year of the monkey. Or the rabbit. Thanks
for watching suitcase rabbit. (Sigh.) What a ridiculous way to end a video.