Madeira Island

Last week right after exams, I set off for an extended weekend trip together with a group of exchange friends and flew to Madeira, the Portuguese island in the Atlantic Ocean. We rented a big house, drove up and down Madeira's hills and spent a surprisingly active short vacation in beautiful sceneries.

Going to Madeira was a fast and budget friendly trip as EasyJet flies there in less than two hours from Lisbon. My flights were a bit over 100€, but if you book earlier you can get them for a lot cheaper as well. The only slightly uneasy part of the trip is knowing that Madeira's airport is supposedly one of the most dangerous in the world. Usually I'm a little anxious only during take offs, but this time the landing also caused some shaky hands.

For our stay in Madeira, we rented a beautiful, big house that easily fit 20 people for dinners and hanging out (and 13 for sleeping comfortably), had a pool and a view to the ocean. The only tricky part was that we never found out the address of the place so it took us well over three hours of driving in the dark to find it for the first time. After we finally by accident found the house, we had a great time and I would really recommend renting a house instead of hotel rooms for any similar trip. We later also realized that the "no clear address"-thing was quite common around the island and trips often took at least twice as long as we planned for due to small roads, huge hills and many wrong turns. 

Renting a car seems to be a real must if you want to see as much as possible of Madeira since everything is located quite far from each other across the island. Our group did what any budget-conscious students would do and rented the cheapest cars that were available, but it might be wiser to get something a bit stronger and bigger - our Opel Corsa and the other small cars were really not made for driving five people on steep and curvy hills. However driving up with first gear and wondering if the engine would last just made the trip a little more adventurous. 

Driving on steep cliffs...

... and through water falls.

I was quite surprised by how active our group was on the trip. Travelling with so many people was great because everyone was able to do different things - while some went coasteering and diving, others went hiking and sightseeing. Paragliding was also supposed to be scheduled but didn't work out due to bad winds. I joined in for the sightseeing and hiking activities just to get a better view of the island. We did two walks on Levadas of which there are many around the island. They are water systems which are apparently meant to take rain water to farmers in towns, but also provide great paths to walk through mountains. The longer Levada walk we took was really beautiful and exciting, although I wish we had known to bring flashlights since it included walking through a pitch black, 100 meter cave tunnel.

Taking a Levada walk.

My favorite spot in Madeira that we visited was the lava pools at Porto Moniz. Although the ride there took forever and even made some people car sick (blame it on the crazy roads, not the late night before...), the place we reached was beautiful. For the price of 1€ we got to swim in the pools filled with natural sea water and watch crazy waves hit the rocks right next to us. It was really relaxing and had it not been so cold we would have probably spent a much longer time there.

Porto Moniz.

The last night of the trip we spent in Funchal to see a bit of Madeira's capital as well. Maybe it is because of the cloudy, rainy weather we had that day, but Funchal was actually the least interesting place I saw on the trip. Even at the end of October, it was packed with tourists which felt quite hectic compared to other parts of the island. We also did not have time to visit any famous attractions such as the botanical garden or the cable cart (the latter we actually only skipped due to its price) so I can't say that I saw much of it. Although Funchal was pretty and well kept, it is Madeira's nature and other sights that I would go back to.