Picking up where I left off in my last post, we are heading into our first full day in Madeira, which turned out to be one for the books. Since we had a long day of hiking and swimming ahead of us, we woke up early to get a head start on our day.

Our first destination was at the top of Madeira, where we headed to take in the views from the highly recommended Pico do Arieiro to Pico Ruivo hike, the highest points in Madeira. This, however, did not go as planned. As we wound our way up the steep roads to reach the parking lot for our destination, we were met with many other confused drivers fighting their way through traffic and altitude sickness. We nervously tried to find a spot in the small lot, and ended up getting into a car accident with another vehicle! Thankfully, no one was injured, but as we got out of the car to assess the situation, the couple in the other car only spoke German. If you can imagine three young girls and a German couple, both driving rental cars in a different country, trying to figure out what to do via Google Translate, you’d probably start laughing as hard as we were … after we resolved the situation.

Eventually, we got back in the car, but the urge to do the hike had vanished. We turned back and about half a mile down the road there was an additional parking lot and trail that had a great viewpoint, which we ended up doing instead. Once we got up there, it truly was stunning. While I wish we got to do the hike as planned, this was a great second option. I do recommend to anyone visiting Madeira and planning on doing the Pico do Arieiro to Pico Ruvio hike to get there as early as possible to avoid as much traffic as possible.

Following our first adventure, we headed back down to sea level after stopping for lunch along the way. Our next stop was to check out the natural pools that formed along the southern coast for a swim. Once we arrived, we found a nice spot to sit down before heading down to jump in the pools. While the water was freezing — naturally, as we were in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean — it was a great cool-down on a hot day. We grabbed some drinks at the bar next to the pools and relaxed for the remainder of the afternoon.

After we returned to our Airbnb, we were wiped out from a long day. We enjoyed another simple but lovely dinner at home of antipasto and pasta, enjoying the views from our balcony. We turned in for an early night before waking up the next morning to take on another long day in Madeira.

— Aly Evans, administrative assistant