Full-day tour
East Side
The mountain half.
We start early enough to be above the clouds before the light goes flat, then come down through laurel forest to the far eastern point.
FUNARE
- Highest point
- 1 818 m
- Length
- Full day
- Stops
- 07
- Price
- From50 €
Where the road takes you.
Not a timetable. The island decides that on the morning. This is the shape of the day and what waits at each height.
01/ 07·0 m
Funchal
Photograph by Diego Delso · CC BY-SA 4.0
01/ 070 m
Funchal
01/ 070 m We start early, early enough that the summit is still above the cloud rather than inside it.
02/ 071 818 m
Pico do Areeiro
02/ 071 818 m The only one of the high peaks you can drive to. On a good morning the cloud lies below you in every direction, flat as a second sea, and the other summits come through it like islands.
03/ 07860 m
Ribeiro Frio
03/ 07860 m Laurel forest that has been here since before the ice ages, kept alive by the cloud we just drove through. Cold water, trout, and a levada running dead level through all of it.
04/ 07380 m
Santana
04/ 07380 m The triangular thatched houses, and the north coast farmland still worked in terraces too steep for anything but hands.
05/ 0740 m
Porto da Cruz
05/ 0740 m Down on the north coast under the Penha de Águia, where sugar cane still goes to the mill and the sea arrives hard enough that the pool had to be cut into the rock.
06/ 07120 m
São Lourenço
06/ 07120 m The island runs out. Red and ochre rock, no shade at all, and the Atlantic arriving from both sides at once.
07/ 0780 m
Cristo Rei
07/ 0780 m The statue at Garajau on the way home, arms open over the water, and the last of the light on the bay below it.
The practical half.
What to bring
- A real jacket: the summit runs about ten degrees colder than Funchal
- Shoes you can walk a stony path in
- Sunglasses; above the cloud the light is hard
- Water, more than you think
If the weather turns
Areeiro is either the best view on the island or a white wall, and it changes hour by hour. We check the summit camera the same morning and reorder the day around what it shows rather than around the plan.
Where we meet
Early pickup at your door. Early is the point.
Hold the date.
A Nossa IlhaBoarding pass
NI 71
From50 €per person
- Length
- Stops
- Class
Other days out.
Photograph by
Bjørn Christian Tørrissen CC BY-SA 3.0 · Diego Delso CC BY-SA 4.0 · Ximonic (Simo Räsänen) CC BY-SA 4.0 · H. Zell CC BY-SA 3.0 · Ввласенко CC BY-SA 3.0 · Richard Bartz CC BY-SA 3.0 · Ввласенко CC BY-SA 3.0 · H. Zell CC BY-SA 3.0 · Alexander Baxevanis CC BY 2.0 · Bex Walton from London, England CC BY 2.0 · Leo-setä CC BY 2.0