Madeira - Day 38 - Queimadas walk

Up early, picked up by the bus, stop at supermarket for coffee and food and a lovely ride for about an hour to the north side of the island.

This house was built around the same time as the levada we were to walk beside today, in the 18th century. The municipality of Santana is the only place in the island where you still see the thatched houses though they used to be prevalent all over.

Today we would walk to the waterfall and then back again.

The path started out quite wide through old stand forests of huge trees.

Periodically we would catch glimpses of valley views but before long we were up in the clouds and all we would see through the gaps, was grey.

The air was moist,

water streamed down the rocks,

sometimes as defined waterfalls,

supporting the masses of ferns and other plants,

and always trickling into the levada.

It took us a couple of hours, crossing aqueducts

and going through 3 different tunnels (I had a flashlight this time)

to get to the waterfall, that looked as if it was falling out of the clouds.

We ate our lunches seated on the boulders at the base of the falls

accompanied again by the scavenging chaffinches.

On the way Pedro, who was the guide again, talked about the plants growing along the path

but I lost some confidence in him when he told us Phlox were Buttercups and when he identified this flower as Broom (Broom is yellow alright but the leaves are very different)

This walk had, by far, the most areas like this, with a narrow wall beside the levada, to walk on, and then a shear drop for hundreds of feet down. It also felt the safest as there was always the metal posts and wire  "railing" too.

We didn't walk back as a group but all went at our own pace which was very nice and allowed me to stop and take pictures without worrying about slowing everyone down. There were times when other walkers were coming and the only solution was to straddle the levada to let them by, unless, like in this photo, there were some handy stones bridging it.

Time for a quick break before boarding the bus to go home.