The Most Beautiful Places of Madeira, Part 2 - Coast and Cliffs

As I mentioned in my previous post, Madeira’s coast in many places forms vertical cliffs, sometimes few hundred meters high. Additionally, in many places you can find rocky, picturesque crags rising directly from the ocean. There are at least 2 places that are worth seeing.

Ilhéu da Ribeira da Janela

With every moment...

These are beautiful rock towers, which are usually furiously hit by waves driven by a strong northern trade wind. The undoubted advantage of this place is the immediate proximity of the parking lot, so you will not get tired when you go there. A visit to this place should be combined with a road trip along the northern coast, so you can see few more interesting things, such as Veu da Noiva waterfall ("Veil of the Bride" – what a pompous name!) and the old coastal road (permanently closed today),which is very often subject to rock fall in worse weather (the new road runs in many places through tunnels avoiding the most dangerous parts of the coast).

...the mood...

... is changing dramatically

Ilhéu da Ribeira da Janela

The northern coast

Veu da Noiva (Veil of the Bride)

The old, closed road along the coast

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula or Ponta de Sao Lourenço is a quite narrow rocky tongue being the easternmost part of Madeira. It is amazing how different it is from the rest of the island, which is covered with a laurel forest giving it a green color. The peninsula itself is dry as pepper and landscape is dominated by sunburnt grass, yellow, red and brown rocks and few pathetic palm trees. At its narrowest point, the peninsula is only a few meters wide and around a hundred high, so better hurry up – maybe in a year, two, 700 or 3000 years it will collapse to the ocean… who knows?

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

Sao Lourenço Pennisula

In the next part, I will try to show you how the most beautiful part of the island looks like - the high mountains.