Hiking and Curing in Madeira

Approaching the mountains of Madeira from the West, they seem nothing else than small hills, so small, that they just provoke a disrespectful “pff” from the lips of an almost Tyrolean like me. Indeed, even people from Madeira themselves name their “mountains” just “PF” as shown on one of the slights. This introduction was the running gag in our group consisting of approximately 20 people willing to feast and hike along the water-channels called “levadas”. Insiders of my homepage might already have stepped across my “yearly feasting cure”, so there is nothing else to add on that. Madeira however, is propably one of the most charming islands I ever visited. Spring like climate all over the year, laurel-woods (Laurus nobilis, Lorbeer), bird-of-paradise flowers (Strelitzia reginae, Strelitzien), passion fruits (Passiflora incarnata, Maracuja) and the port-like Madeira wine left fragmentary but marvellous impressions.