Back in January, when the days were 6 hours long, it was cold and nasty, we decided to look for a place we could slip away to for a few days of warmth and sunshine. In searching through our timeshare trading options, we found Madeira. My friend Lars' wife Petra recommended it, and are we glad she did!
Since this is not one of the most well known places around, let's look at some geography. Madeira is a Portuguese island in the south Atlantic ocean, about 300 miles off the coast of Morocco. It's basically a mountain in the middle of the ocean. But it gets all of the trade winds and the rain they bring, so it lush and green. There's no beaches, all the coastline is rocky.
this is one of those places that you kinda don't know where to start in describing it. Beautiful, breathtaking, warm, cold sunny, misty, foggy....friendly, inexpensive, sometimes a bit frightening.
We had planned to do a lot of walking, through the mountains, etc. Centuries ago, we they created stone ditches called levadas to bring the rainwater from the mountains to the lower levels to use it for agriculture. Now, all of those are walkways. Most are beautiful, some are very dangerous.
I've also never seen a place so vertical. Every road was a 15 degree slope. The hairpin turn made West Virginia roads look wide and flat! And there were times when all you saw of the edge of the road was a set of dragon's teeth stone barriers and blue sky. That was a bit freaky!
Yes, we decided to rent a motorcycle. All they had the day I went there was a 650 or 1200 cc BMW. I took the 1200 (R1200GS). Wow, what a bike! Powerful, smooth, heavy and way too tall for me. But a lot of fun to drive. We basically went all over the island on it in 3 days, seeing some of the most spectacular scenery ever.
Bottom line, we had a fantastic time. The food was great, and cheap. The most expensive dinner we had the entire week was about 60$ for the both of us, and most of the others were about half that much.
Of course, we took lots of pictures. The slideshow is below.
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