Funchal, Madeira – December 6, 2013

The seas were calm again last night, and we slept well before getting up at about 6:30 AM to get ready to go ashore on our last scheduled port of call in the city of Funchal, Madeira. After getting ready, we headed up to get some breakfast in the buffet. The port was small, and we were already tied up alongside the pier before we got to breakfast. The official start of the port call was 8:00 AM, so we were not in any rush even though the ship appeared to have arrived early. Unfortunately, they were not allowing anyone off of the ship until the designated departure time.

After breakfast, we gathered up our usual port stop gear and packed it into our backpacks. The plan for today is to walk into town, and eventually head over to the cable car for the ride up to Monte, a small town up in the mountains above Funchal. We had done this the last time we visited here, and the cable car is a quick and scenic way to get to the top.

The ship was docked about 1.5 miles from the center of town, and our plan was to walk into town since most of the shops and the cable car do not open until 9:00 AM anyway. As we were getting off of the ship, we ran into Julio and Elena, our Pisa travel partners. We walked with them into town before splitting up, they were trying to find a city bus to go to a church outside of Funchal that they had wanted to see.

We headed towards the cable car, but first stopped at the seafood/vegetable market nearby. We took some pictures of the strange fish they catch and eat here called the Espada, something that is caught in waters over 1,000 feet deep. They also had some large Swordfish and what looked to be Tuna. Stephanie visited some of the small vendor booths and bought a couple of small linen hand towels for souvenirs.

The grocery store was also nearby, so we went in and scouted around to see what they we needed to pick up later in the day on the way back to the ship. We certainly did not want to tote anything for the entire day as we planned on taking a Levada walk at the top of the mountains near Monte.

Since it was now after 9:00 AM, we headed over to the cable car and bought a one way ticket to the top. The views were fantastic, although we could see some of the damage from some heavy rains and flooding that occurred here in 2010. Once at the top, we walked over to the Nossa Senhora do Monte Church. We went inside for some photos, and them climbed up one of the bell towers to a balcony area for some better views of the harbor and of Funchal.

After that, we walked by the area where the wicker basket toboggans are leaving from for their ride down the mountain.

There were a couple of bus loads of cruise passengers that had taken the cable car up after us, and it appeared they were heading over to the toboggans for the ride down. We had done that the last time we were here in 2009, so we opted to do something different, to try and find the Lavada Walks that started nearby.

We had downloaded some directions and pictures from a another blog site, but still had a little bit of trouble verifying our location since we could not find one of the landmarks used in the write-up, a small chapel.

Some of the signage had either been replaced, or was missing, because the pictures in the write-up were different from the signs we saw, but eventually we sort of figured it out, not however, until we actually hiked over to one area, thought we were not going the right way, and hiked back.

Stephanie finally asked a woman in a ticket booth selling tickets for the nearby botanical gardens cable car, and she informed us the small chapel we were looking for had been washed away in the 2010 storm.  She pointed out the location of where it had been before the floods. We then followed the remainder of the downloaded directions, although at times, even they were a little sketchy on details.

The walks were nice, although it was a little muddy in some areas. You are basically walking along a stone channel, with an inside concrete overlay, about 2 feet wide and 3 feet deep. These channels carry the water from the mountains to various areas on the island, where it is used as drinking water.

The initial portion of the walk was on a trail that was quite steep in some areas, both uphill and then downhill. We walked for about 30 minuted before we finally found the actual lavada. You end up walking beside the water channel as it winds across the faces of the mountains. Mostly,  these channels route through forested areas.

Every once and a while we got a good view of the city of Funchal and of the harbor where the ship was docked. You could also tell that some of the forested areas had been damaged in the 2010 storm. There were some uprooted trees along the path, and some of the other trees looked as if a lot of the foliage was missing.

The lavada occasionally crossed over some roads, but we did not see anywhere to catch a bus back into Funchal. The instruction guide we had downloaded did not really provide us a sense of duration or distance we were traveling for us to transit the length of  the route listed on their blog.

We did see many of the referenced landmarks, of special interest was an area where a few lavadas merged together, and were mixed onto one pipeline that fed into a large open top concrete storage tank.

We were not really pressed for time, but the uncertainty of the total duration of the walk added a little bit of apprehension, reducing some of the enjoyment. We had plenty of time to get back to the ship, but it still crept into our minds, especially since we were at sea for the next several days, having no way to catch up to the ship if we happened to be late returning.

We finally approached another small town, and so we decided to end our journey here. It was near a landmark called the Teahouse, so we now knew where we were in relation to our downloaded instructions.  The blog write-up included  one more section of hiking, but since we did not know how much longer that section would take, we decided just to end our walk here, we had seen enough of the levadas to appreciate their beauty.

There was a bus stop near where we exited the trail, and we asked a couple who was waiting there if this bus went into Funchal. They were vacationing here from the UK, and said they had completed the same Lavada walk from Monte as we had, and that yes, the bus stopping here went to Funchal.

The couple told us the bus had just passed going the other way, and so they were waiting for it to return to go in the opposite direction to Funchal. We waited about 30 minutes before the bus finally arrived. They had weekly bus passes, so they got on ahead of us. When we tried to purchase tickets from the driver, he would not sell them to us, just motioned for us to get our seats. We were not sure why until about 10 minutes later when the bus stopped at what was labeled “termino”, which was the end of the line, and all of the locals riding on our bus got off.  The bus driver turned the bus around, and then shut it off.

Stephanie and I were a little concerned, but then the bus driver said “tickets”, and we asked if the bus was indeed going to Funchal. It was, and we purchased our two tickets. What had happened was that we had gotten on the bus heading downhill, which was assumed to be toward Funchal. However, it was actually going away from Funchal, and we rode “for free” to the end of the line at the “termino”, where we were then able to purchase tickets for the ride to Funchal. The couple from the UK should have gotten on the first bus they saw before we met them, it was actually the bus heading down into Funchal, but they assumed it was the bus from Funchal since it was going “uphill”.  This was verified as we passed the bus stop we got on at as we headed in the opposite direction toward Funchal. This section of the route happened to be on a small secondary road, not on the main road into Funchal. It was a little amusing once we figured it all out, and realized we were now heading back into town.

About 20 minutes later, we got off of the bus at the grocery store in downtown Funchal and went in to purchase a few items. This was going to be our last stop before the seven remaining sea days crossing the Atlantic Ocean, so we got some diet Pepsi, and some fruit juices for mixers.

With our backpacks full, we walked around looking at items in some of the stores. We were working our way through town in the direction of the ship, and decided to stop at a Pizza Hut for a couple of beers, and to use their free WiFi for about an hour before heading back to the ship. We got caught up on our email and Stephanie was able to finally log into her Facebook for a long awaited update and Facebook withdrawal “fix”. At about 4:00 PM, we started the 2 mile walk back to the ship. It was just across the harbor, but it was a good walking distance to get there from the town. The route along the harbor allowed us to get a few pictures of the ship along the way.

Once back on board, we unloaded our gear, and Stephanie wanted to head back out to the terminal to visit some of the vendors selling souvenirs. The ship was scheduled to have everyone on board by 5:30 PM, and it was about 4:50 PM when we got off. There was not really anything to look at from the remaining 2-3 vendors, so we headed back to the ship and took a few photos of Funchal from the upper decks of the ship before our departure.

On the way back to the cabin, we got some chips and salsa from the buffet and headed back to our balcony to enjoy happy hour with some adult beverages as we sailed away from Funchal. Over the next seven days, we will be sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on the long journey to Ft. Lauderdale, about 3,200 nautical miles from Funchal.

We were pretty tired and sore form today’s lavada walks, plus all of the walking to and from the ship, so we just headed to the buffet for some dinner.

We did go to the Princess Theater for a comedy show, and the comedian had been working on cruise ships for 30 years, and had a lot of funny jokes about all of the cruise lines and their individual peculiarities, as well as those of the passengers who sail the different lines. It was very entertaining. After that, we called it a night and headed back to the room.

It had been a tiring day in port. The Captain had informed us earlier, as we left Funchal, that the weather will be good until Sunday afternoon or evening, and then we will run into a low pressure system that will produce some higher winds, and some rain, then clearing sometime Monday afternoon. After that, the weather conditions were looking good for the remainder of the journey, at least for now.

To view more photos from today’s post, here is a link to the Photo Album for Funchal, or you can access it via the menu on the top right.