I visited Madeira, back in October 2012, with one of my good friends. We visited as part of our 7-day cruise, around the Canaries, with Thomson’s, now called Tui.
Madeira is a Portuguese owned island. The island is 35 miles long, 13 miles wide, and has a whopping 99 miles of coastline. You may think the island is full of beautiful, golden sand beaches. It’s not, it has a coastline full of rocks and cliffs. It is a mountainous island. The highest peak is 1862 meters, above sea level.
As we were on a cruise ship, we only visited for the day. A day is not long enough to explore the whole island. After a stormy night, we docked in Funchal, the capital of Madeira. It was a wet, stormy day, in October. Despite the miserable weather, we purchased some capes on the ship, and walked into Funchal, to explore the capital.
One of the top things to do in Funchal is to take the cable car up to the Botanical Garden and Monte Palace. The views going up are fantastic but can be scary too. It was very windy when my friend, Laura and I went up. In fact, after braving the journey up, hearing the wind howl it’s the way through our cable car, they closed the ride.
Once you are at the top, you have a choice to either take the cable car down, walk down, get a taxi down, or go the fun way down, on toboggans. The toboggans are called Monte sledges and have been a popular form of transportation in Monte, since 1850. They are made out of wicker, with 2 sled drivers called, Carreiros. The Carreiro’s are dressed in straw hats, white pants, and special shoes that help them keep traction. The 2 Carreiros push you down the hill, around corners at speed. They are so much fun to ride but can be terrifying for some people. Laura screamed her way down, almost causing hearing loss in my left ear! I don’t think she will be rushing back on them as quickly as I want too!
