Thanks, Wayne.
In case you were serious about the wine, yes we did. A colleague who is a
former wine buyer, recommended checking a few vineyards for wine-tasting
purposes. But there are 40,000 vineyards on Madeira, mostly small, almost
alotments. And there are only 5 buyers/exporters, old families, I should
guess. So we'll try the wine tours next time, but we did try some Sercial and
some Bual wines and they are fine. While we were there we drank mostly
Alentejo and Douro wines.
You can drive up to Pico do Arieiro which is at 1,818m, although the road is
narrow, steep, windy and of indifferent surface. You go from warm or mile to
cold and dry as you climb through the cloud. Once up there it is beautiful and
the path is a 10km scramble between Pico do Arieiro and Pico Ruivo. If you
look at the image <http://smu.gs/uWrju1> and enlarge it to Original (it's a
half-size JPEG) you will see a miradouro on the left, marked with a small white
sign. That's probably about 2km along the way and the path goes along the side
of the mountain beyond it, before dipping into what looks like a valley to the
right (it's a col, but it will be a steep path either side).
We met a young Dutch couple who had walked the other way, from Ruivo to Arieiro
and I thought that they were joking because it looks like a valley, not a col,
until you get closer. We walked to that miradouro, one of several, and it
feels wonderful to be high on the ridge there, although the winds were up at
around 20-25kts and it was cold out of the sun. I took the images for one of
the panoramas <http://smu.gs/sZkezF> from that miradouro making sure that I
steadied myself on the low wall overlooking the valley (it's a sheer drop)
before I put my eye to the viewfinder ;-)
When we go back to Madeira we will do that walk. You can do all the way to
Arieiro from Santana (northeast coast), but it's probably a little easier to do
it the other way round, ending in the warm and the downhill stretch.
Chris
On 6 Nov 2011, at 23:37, WayneS wrote:
> Very nice, Any chance you tasted the local wine?
>
> The waterfall shot gets my explore juices going. But even more so #19, with
> the clouds. From what vantage point did you get that shot, off road or
> hiking? I've only had shots close to that in the Rocky Mountains, how high up
> were you?
--
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