Madeira walk number 2: Ponta de São Lourenço
In which your intrepid reporter learns all about thistles, nearly dislocates her elbow and falls in love with a daring kestrel.
The second walk didn't quite pan out the way I’d planned. The idea was to walk from the third-highest peak of the island, the Pico do Areeiro, to the highest, the Pico Ruivo. Sadly, when we arrived at the Pico do Areeiro, we were informed that owing to the previous weeks’ extreme weather conditions, there was still too much snow on the path for us to do the walk. We could have a quick look around if we wanted (breathtaking views all around), and have a quick snowball fight if we were so inclined (not quite what I’d had in mind when I booked a flight to sunny, subtropical Madeira...), but they weren’t going to let us on the path. Instead they offered to take us to the easternmost tip of the island, for a walk along the São Laurenço coastline. Which turned out to be rather like Cornwall's Land's End, except that it was longer and narrower, more beautiful, less sullied by theme parks and parking lots, and, well, sunny. So sunny, in fact, that I was glad one of my fellow walkers had brought some sun-tan lotion with him, as I would have got a nasty sunburn without it. Several members of my group did, and they didn’t even have my light skin. :-)
As it happened, I enjoyed the São Lourenço walk every bit as much as I later enjoyed the peaks walk. It might not have been as spectacular, but it was nice seeing the empty, arid land, the different kinds of volcanic rock, the deep-blue ocean, the way the cliffs disappeared into that ocean, and the way the sunshine changed the appearance of the orange-brownish rocks off the coast. I also really appreciated our guide, a guy I know I wouldn’t have got on with in real life, but admired very much on a professional level. He knew exactly when to stop to give his group a breather (without appearing to be doing so), cracked lots of jokes which weren’t really funny but still made me laugh, and kept us going (despite complaints about growling stomachs) until we reached our designated lunch spot, which may well have been the most beautiful lunch spot of my life: a cliff with a view of the narrowest point of the island, enclosed on both sides by the Atlantic. Moreover, he turned out to be quite knowledgeable on the local flora and fauna, pointing out flowers that had different colours here than everywhere else because of the low-iron soil, telling anecdotes about different kinds of thistles, etc. The highlight of the trip (as far as I was concerned) was when he drew our attention to a bird-fight in which a kestrel tried to protect its chicks from a buzzard. As spectacular as some of the cliffs were, it was even more thrilling watching the kestrel swoop down almost vertically on the much larger buzzard, trying (and eventually managing) to scare it away from the nest. I’d seen that kind of thing on TV, but seeing it in real life was... breathtaking.
Sadly, I missed out on one of the more spectacular parts of the walk - the climb up the cliff at the easternmost tip of the peninsula, which is so steep and covered in loose gravel that my guide considered it a security risk and stressed quite emphatically that it was not part of our walk per se and that he and his company would not be responsible if anything happened on the way up or down. As it happened, mine was a particularly adventurous group, which took that warning as a challenge rather than as a discouragement and so proceeded straight into the direction of the cliff. Personally, I was rather apprehensive about going up, as I don’t really like steep ascents (my asthmatic lungs simply can’t handle them), but I didn’t want to be the only wimp in the group, so I gave it a shot. Only about ten metres from the bottom I slipped and fell, hurting my left hand and elbow in the process. I could get up just fine, and didn’t suffer any lasting consequences (I think!), but it was all the proof I needed not to go up any further. Which was probably a good decision, given the number of people who made even nastier falls on the way down. And though I missed out on what was apparently a very spectacular view from the top of the cliff, I did get a rather entertaining private lecture on Madeiran thistles from our guide, so I wasn’t too bored while being a wimp.
All in all, it was a great walk - less spectacular than the mountain hike I was supposed to have gone on that day, but a great and impressive experience nonetheless. Worth it for the lunch spot and the bird fight alone.
The bird fight I can’t reproduce for you here, but an image of the lunch spot follows below, at the end of the series.
The scenery near the start-off point.
Getting closer to the ocean.
The Alantic on the northern side of the island.
Spectacular rocks off the coast.
The view from where I sat munching my dried bananas. One of the more spectacular places where I’ve had lunch, enclosed on both sides by the Atlantic.
