A Walker in the Suburbs

Returning home is often a jolt. Jet lag, beauty lag. (Is there such a thing? There should be.)

But this time Northern Virginia has pulled out all the stops. The volunteer weeping cherry is putting on a show in the backyard. The daffodils spring from fatter clumps that ever, and hyacinths are perfuming the garden. Lenten roses are in their glory and the periwinkle is blooming. 

Welcome back, say these green and growing things. Feast your eyes on us! Yes, we know all about the  birds-of-paradise and calla lilies on Madeira, but we’re pretty too. 

Visiting a city for the second time takes the pressure off. We had already ticked off the big sights, so we could wander and people-watch and spend two hours at a flea market. 

But on the last day of our three-day stopover, we had to see the Monument to the Discoveries again, to ogle the gigantic sculpture. Since it’s a short walk from there to Belem Tower, we visited that again, too. 

The tower was the last sight early sailors would have seen as they set off for foreign ports and years-long voyages. It took on a special meaning since earlier in the day we visited the final ship to make the Portugal-India run. It gave us a taste of early navigation, of tight quarters and difficulties braved.

Travel has come a long way since then … but it’s still about discoveries, large and small. 

Funchal, Madeira’s capital city, is tucked between the mountains and the sea. Houses cling to hillsides. Roads rise at 45-degree angles, and highways glide through tunnels (there are 156 of them on the island). 

But even here, there are limits — rocky gorges, mountains cleft by streams and waterfalls. For those less navigable places there are cable cars, gondolas that glide above it all. 

You can take one from the harbor to Monte, and a shorter and less traveled one from Monte to the Botanical Gardens. That’s the one we chose on Thursday.

Similar to a ski lift, the car never stops moving. You step in, the door closes, and you are floating hundreds of feet above the ground. I mostly focused on the horizon, but every so often I glanced down or to the side, which gave me a chance to snap this shot. I have a feeling the occupants of the other car were doing the same thing.

Let’s just say there are so many noteworthy gardens in Madeira that I completely confused two of the more famous ones. I thought we were going to the Botanical Gardens when instead the friends we were meeting were visiting the Monte Palace Tropical Gardens — which we had just seen two days earlier.

No problem, they said. You can take a cable car to the Botanical Gardens from here and meet us later. And that’s what we did: had a quiet glide across a rocky ravine from one garden spot to another. 

And then… we were wandering beneath arbors groaning with wisteria, past pink and white camellias, strolling past cactus and bromeliads and ferns and a patchwork garden of reds and greens. 

In a way, the whole city is a garden, with bougainvillea pouring over walls, and potted plants on most terraces. And always in the background, the Atlantic Ocean.  

Before yesterday’s excursion, a fellow hiker said, “You will love this walk. Everything is green and blue.” She had taken the trail before, so she knew.

But nothing could have prepared me for the particular shades of green and blue, for the commingling of ocean, sky and grass, for the pastoral setting, the lone cows grazing.

There was so much green and so much blue, and when you walked out to the Pico Vermelho viewpoint, it was as if you were walking into the ocean on a gigantic earthen gangplank. Only you didn’t enter the sea; you marveled at it. 

One of Funchal’s major tourist attractions is riding the cable car (a gondola-style lift known locally as the teleferico) up to Monte, elevation 3,300 feet, where there is a church, a palace garden and a rip-roaring way to come back down — by toboggan. 

Two strong, straw-hatted men (called carreiros) give each toboggan a running start, then jump on and use their thick-soled boots to brake the contraption as it descends the steep street. Sometimes they slide the toboggan sideways so it doesn’t gain too much speed. 

The tradition began in the 19th century, when the toboggans — which are woven of wicker in the nearby town of Camacha — were a major means of transporting people and goods down the steep mountainside. 

Now tourists pay 30 euros for a 10-minute ride, and the carreiros are bused back up to the starting point every few minutes. But the tradition, as they say, lives on. 

(Photos: Carreiros mid-ride and walking back from the bus to the starting point.)