A Walker in the Suburbs

It’s the end of our first week in Madeira. We arrived here late morning last Friday. Since then we have hiked levada paths, toured northern villages, sampled local food and drink, and best of all, made new friends. 

This trip is a different kind of adventure, staying put rather than moving around, micro not macro. I’ll admit, it’s an adjustment for me. But it’s a delightful adjustment.

As we walk the paths, we pass so close to homes that we can practically smell the coffee being brewed. And we can certainly glimpse the lush gardens being tended and hear the roosters crowing.

What would it be like to live on a levada? To have a house so much a part of its surroundings? I would have to be a different kind of person to find out. 

To travel means meeting people, as well as places. One of the people we’ve met in Madeira is an 81-year-old dynamo with orangey-red hair, bright blue eyes and a contagious smile. 

She brings people together, plans levada walks and other excursions. When there’s a steep descent, she leads the group. As I was mincing my way down a trail of rain-slicked stones, she offered me her walking stick. “Take it,” she said. “It’s like a third leg.”

I found a stick in the forest so she could keep her own, but she got me thinking about the idea of a third leg. What would I do if I had one? Walk faster? Move more sure-footedly, with a tripod-like balance? 

I like the idea of a spare or two, but it’s greedy to ask for more limbs when the ones I have are working fine.  If I did have a third leg, though, I hope I would offer it to a friend. When I did, I would see in my mind’s eye the cheerful, lined face of the woman who offered me hers. 

(My third leg, above.)

Imagine a valley so isolated that until the last 50 years or so, people who were born there seldom left the place. That’s Curral des Freiras, Valley of the Nuns. 

Located in the center of Madeira, the valley was once home to an order of sisters who hid here to escape pirates, or so legend has it. The location does make an excellent hiding place, perhaps a little too excellent.

We saw it on a cool morning, with clouds hovering over the mountain tops. We didn’t hike down (though we did a similar downhill later in the day), but you can do it if you have the time and the knees.

I’m just as glad I saw it from the peaks, the lack of easy entry or exit giving the place an ethereal quality, like it isn’t quite there at all. 

The jet-lagged traveler thinks there’s no way she could sleep for 12 hours and miss the beginning of a scheduled hike. But the jet-legged traveler just slept 10 quite handily, so who knows what she could do. 

Now she’s fully awake and looking at a sky-scape and city-scape of such generosity and grandeur that she doesn’t quite know how to bring it to life on the electronic page. 

The sun is just peeking from behind a small clutch of clouds that are producing some rain across the bay, and a small ferry is moving quickly toward a small island. To my left is the old town, still in slumbering shadow. Directly ahead … the Atlantic Ocean, which seems to be everywhere you look. This is, after all, an island. And one we’ll be exploring soon. 

(It looks monochromatic but that’s only because I was snapping a shot directly into the sun.)

We flew in long and low, not far above the whitecaps, as the jet circled into position to land in Funchal. We bounced and tilted, I held my breath. And then, quicker than I thought possible, we were on the ground.

The capital city of Madeira is nestled between the mountains and the sea, and the runway of the nearby airport, it’s said, is built partially on stilts.

I believe it, just as I’m starting to believe everything I’ve heard about this place, this jewel of an island with red tile roofs atop buildings of pink and yellow, with homes terraced up the hillsides and a jumble of streets leading down from them.

A jumble of streets I’m itching to explore…