MADEIRA - PART 1
We were on the 6:05 flight out of Porto, which meant we arrived in Madeira around 8:00 in the morning. The flight was smooth, which is saying a lot given the reputation of the now-named Cristiano Ronaldo Airport as being one of the worst airports to land at (you tube Madeira Airport if you want to see the types of conditions you don’t want to await your arrival here). Our check in wasn’t until 5pm so Ann and I decided to do a grand tour of the island during the day to check out the sights.
We first headed east, and found out that the clouds and weather really do change several times a day here. From the eastern-most portions of the island we could see the near-by Deserted Islands.
Fingers extend eastward into the ocean from Ponta de São Lourenço. By the time we arrived, about 9:00, the parking lot was mostly full with hikers taking the various trails that extend across the fingers, despite the periodic drizzle. We were there just to scope it out, so we continued on our drive.
Here it’s where we got the first taste between the north and south side of the island. The drive wasn’t long, we just drove around a hill, so you’re looking at the north side of the same fingers that extend eastward.
As you’ll see, Madeira is very mountainous and there are roads that run up and down the mountains, and others that run through them. It makes a lot of sense because if you’re taking the mountainous roads, you’re not getting anywhere quickly. As it is, there aren’t many roads that go over the north eastern part of the island, so we tunneled our way to where civilization starts on the north coast.
From there, at elevation, we had a nice view of Porto Santo Island, the other inhabited island in this chain.
We quickly realized that what they said about Madeira is true - it’s mountainous and there’s a lot of vegetation on the north side of the island.
One must say, it’s incredibly beautiful.
Given that our reason for coming here was photography, we were very interested in the weather patterns and again, we quickly found out that what we’d been told is true. Much of the weather comes in from the north and comes from the uplifting currents that produces clouds, fog and mist/rain. We found it can suddenly appear and just as quickly disappear.
A few minutes after the photograph above, I made the one below, not much farther down the road.
I can’t say how much we really underestimated the slopes here. Maps give you the impression that things are close to each other. But even topography maps fail to give a real sense of what it’s like. It’s amazing where you’ll find houses on the island.
And the roads are not for the faint of heart, especially when a tour bus is headed your way on what seems to be a one-car road.
And that was the story of our first day. Up, then down, then up, then down. The “flat” part of the island is on the south coast (and on a plateau on a small part of the island). This is what much of the north coast looks like, with towns positioned in the valleys at the mouth of the rivers.
We made a windy run around and through most of the island that first day, with a good portion without photos because the clouds turned to a drizzle and time passed much quicker than we’d thought it would (with the Beatles’ “The Long and Winding Road” a constant ear-worm). At one point we hurried down to Funchal, using the tunnels instead of the local roads and checked into our Air BNB.
It’s a decent place with lots of space and a great location, not to mention a view into a city park from the living room.
The next day was an unwind day for us. Settle in, walk around the neighborhood a bit, get ourselves situated for the next two weeks and mentally transition from work and trip preparation to enjoying vacation.
As I’d mentioned earlier, I’d thought of doing a post called “Ann and Dan are Terrible Tourists.” The fact is, we are. We don’t really enjoy most tourist sights, even when they’re interesting. We just can’t get ourselves to go from one place to another to another. We’d instead prefer to go to one place and relax both before and after, if not just roam around a neighborhood to get a feel for it.
The one “touristy” place we went to was the Mercado dos Lavradores, the outdoor market. It was like many markets, full of interesting goods and hustling salespersons. Face it, we are not great negotiators. Did you know there are many different types of passion fruit grown on Madeira. We walked away with one of each, as well as with a banana that has an apple taste and another fruit that you eat like a corn on the cob . . . that is if you wait until it’s ripe and the skin just flakes off. Let’s just say that some of the fruit was good, others wasn’t and we’re not buying any more fruit.
Still, the market was a nice visit and was near the Continente (think Albertsons) that we wanted to pick up a few goods for cooking with. One of the reasons for getting an apartment for a week was to cook our own breakfasts, if not other meals. The Portuguese do many things well, but breakfast is not one of them.
Ann and I had already gotten into the habit of carrying our Lumix cameras with us, so when I saw this coming out of Continente, I had to set the bags down and make an image. This is why we came here.
The next morning was the start of our first serious explorations of the island. I wouldn’t quite call it planned photography sessions, because we were still getting to know the place, but the first serious scouting trip. My hopes weren’t very high because, while The Photographer’s Ephemeris 3d image had shown this location, the “Balcony” as an ideal location for a sunrise photograph, largely because the sun would light up the tallest mountains on the island from that vantage point, the forecast was for low-lying clouds that morning. And that’s what we got.
Still, with weather comes possibilities and steep-sided mountains in fog are a sight to behold, so I didn’t complain too much.
One direction from the balcony faces the mountains, the other side . . . the ocean to the north. You can even see Porto Santo Island off in the distance.
It didn’t take long for my attention to return to the mountains that were the purpose of our hike out to the balçoes. I switched back and forth between lenses and spent quite a bit of time zoomed in on the mountains.
And while I did my best to show that they look like in groups . . .
. . . perhaps the most interesting image will have to wait until latter (if it pans out). The new update to Capture One is supposed to allow for panoramic stitching, and I made an impressive pano of the mountains that will have to wait until CaptureOne 22 comes out. I’ll keep you updated.
It’s easy to become fascinated by clouds and mountains, so I’ll refrain from flooding you with images that I made. Perhaps not the best of photographs, but fun to explore through the camera nonetheless.
While we were out on the Balçoes, we saw only two other couples up there (one other guy beat us there that morning). As we headed back, we passed several people inbound. I joked to Ann that one of the guide books said to get there by 10:00, before the busloads of tourists start arriving to the site. We laughed about that comment until I looked at my watch, said it was 10:15, and then we hit the end of the trail where we had parked along the road. The roadside was full of cars and a bus was parked in front of the restaurant in the town. We drove down the road to another coffee shop, had a great snack and some coffee . . . and headed back to encounter a traffic jam with every available space packed with cars, three busses in one of the two driving lanes, a fourth bus trying to squeeze through without hitting the car in front of us or our car. I guess the guide book was right!
After the Balçoes, we headed up to Pico do Arierio, the second highest peak in Madeira. The approach to the peak is from the south, which is evident from the views up top. From the left (south), you can see it’s clear . . .
and when you start looking to the north (to the right) . . .
you see the clouds coming in. It is an interesting climate on the island, where it can be overcast and rainy in one part of it, and sunny at another. I’ve got the website for the weather cameras, stationed around the island, so I can check in case we need better (or different) weather to visit.
As we made our way down from Pico do Arieiro, via a different route, we stopped to photograph the conditions on the south side of the island. As you can see, beyond the clouds hovering over the mountain tops, there’s sun!
Our route back home (i.e. through the mountains) took us by the “Nun’s valley.” To paraphrase my Facebook post on the valley, “What do you do when you’re a convent of nuns on an island that pirates like to periodically frequent?” You build yourself a retreat (literally) up in the mountains in a hidden valley that no pirate is ever going to discover. Getting to this place by car was historically as difficult as it looks, the modern version has a tunnel running through the mountain (the entrance is off to the right).
Apparently, the old road they used to have was recently closed for safety reasons.
Still, you have to admit it’s a beautiful place to hang out for a while until things settle down back in Funchal.
Strangely enough, not only was the grand landscape enticing, a closer subject caught my interest while I was out on the viewing platform.
Which just happened to be a few feet below the view off in the distance.
The next day was Ann’s birthday, so I decided to treat her to our first real visit to the forest that was the main draw for Madeira in the first place - the Fanal Forest (the first pass-by on day one was through cloud cover and rain, and a zillion cars in the parking lot . . . we did not stop).
The Fanal Forest is part of a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is part of the largest Laurisilva forest in the world, believed to be 90% primary forest. The Fanal Forest lies on a small plateau between the north and the south parts of the island, so is frequented with fog and the moisture it brings for the vegetation.
Like most stunningly beautiful sights, its fairly easy to get a photograph that astound people, but extremely difficult to make a good Photograph. On this trip our goals were very modest - it was a scouting trip. Still, as an earlier blog post explained, I’d made an offer to Ann to coach her on a day of her choice, and this was the day. You’ve seen the one photograph I took my time making. These are the scouting shots (fairly unsuccessful) that I made along the way.
One of the things we have to remember as photographers is to not miss the beauty of the place we’re photographing while we’re working. More often than not, our images will fall far short of our aspirations and what a waste it would be for us to not soak in the beauty of our inspirations while we’re working. Fortunately, that was not a problem this time.
As the fog rolled in and out, the environment kept changing, offering different views of the same landscape. Most beautiful, some ominous, . . .
. . . but always incredible.
As the fog lifted and the crowds started arriving, we decided to leave, having not yet scouted the entire site (the more eastern portion). That would have to wait for another occasion, but that was fine. From this trip we knew that there was at least one location on the island where images could be plentiful.
As one might expect, we took a different route out of the mountains which afforded us yet more views of . . . mountains.
And it didn’t take long for us to run into villages nestled into mountain crevasses.
Despite the fact that they really don’t offer any opportunities for the type of photography we really enjoy doing, we have gotten into the habit of stopping at miroduros (viewpoints), just to enjoy the view.
Occasionally they will offer something that contains the seeds of a photograph, particularly when the light is right, but nonetheless, the views are spectacular.
The next day was our anniversary, and I had planned a hike into a photo shoot that I was hoping would be as successful as our trip to the Fanal Forest. Boy was I wrong! Despite all of my planning, the entrance into the hike was a full 2 kilometers away from the town where you had to park, and, because we drove by to check things out before committing ourselves to the hike, the area didn’t seem fairly flat - it was steep and not very appealing photographically.
So in keeping with our tradition of not sweating the details, we changed plans. Which wasn’t too bad of a thing because I had a Plan B, which was actually a driving route we would take after our hike, and we proceeded to drive on. And that was a good thing.
A short drive later we were at Portal, which offered us views to the east . . .
and to the west.
We spent a bit of time at the Portal location watching the sun rise and present a performance to Madeira. Face it, we’re on vacation and it’s not only about photography.
We eventually drove down to Porto da Cruz, visible just to the right of the big rock above. Which is just as inspiring from sea level as it is from afar.
Plan B involved a drive to check out a few more photography locations, to include some off-shore rocks at Porto da Cruz. Unfortunately, those rocks turned out to not be very promising, but we enjoyed the hike around the point in any event.
Particularly since I took a stroll down some stairs to a set of rocks along the shore and found this behind me.
One does not look a gift horse in the mouth. Just photograph it.
Of course, you should be familiar with Porto da Cruz, it’s where I photographed the three doors that are the subject of an earlier post.
Our journey back took us through, you guessed it, the mountains! It’s really hard to describe how incredible they are. Maybe folks get used to it, but Ann and I haven’t yet.
Naturally, given this was a scouting trip, my route back took a different path than before. And while there were new views of familiar places, we didn’t really find any great photography locations. We made a few stops here and there, but none of the places I’d flagged had panned out. That’s the difference between looking at something on a map and actually being there.
Still, the time was not wasted and we’d had an opportunity to explore most of the island. We were approaching the end of our stay in Funchal in the south part of the island so we simply enjoyed what we could of the big city before we headed up north to Seixal. We had some incredible meals in Funchal, but we were ready to start getting serious about photography.
By now I can say that we have already started our photographing days. While not quite as fruitful as we’d hoped (or as I used to say in my youth, “In my wildest dreams!”), they are what we expected - the first steps of getting back to doing what we love so well. I’ll leave it at that instead of wallow in misery!