Madeira, Day 5: Blister in the sun

After days of searching and being thwarted with clouds and wind and rain and hail, today we finally found the sun. It was close, too, just down the road from the guest house in Paul do Mar. Almost literally at the bottom of the cliff from the guest house. Just for kicks, after spending the better part of three hours laying on my back on the cement as the waves crashed against the rocks next to me, getting a bit of a sunburn in the process–just for kicks I decided to hike halfway up the mountain. At the north end of Paul do Mar, a trail head leads straight up the mountain side, zig-zagging twists every fifty feet or so. I didn’t realize how steep it was until I stopped when I got high enough to get some good pictures. This is one I took with the iPhone so you could see what I mean. That blue sky is the first we’ve seen in such abundance since our arrival on this island which is supposedly made of sun. (Helmut told us yesterday he laughed when he saw an advertisement on the side of a tourist bus that read, “Madeira is…sol.” Not this month!) As I took off my pack to get some photos, I started to get acrophobic. Up until then, I was concentrating on climbing, looking at the trail and not really looking down or around. But once I stopped to take in the view, I realized how high up I was, and how steep the trail is. One false step onto what I thought might be solid ground covered with grass and I could slide right down the side of the mountain.

The narrow path on the left ends at the rocks in the bottom of the picture at the right. If you’re not paying close enough attention, you could tumble down where the mountain has fallen away and slide into the rocks that have crumbled against the side of that building down there. I became so nervous that I had to sit down and just take a few deep breaths, tell myself it was all right. The trail was a well constructed path, steps built into the side of the mountain. I wasn’t going to fall. I just had to make sure not to look down. So all the way back to the base, I concentrated on my feet and watched the trail, never looking around. There is no sea, there are no cliffs, there is no mountain. There is just this trail right in front of me. And I won’t let it out of my sight.

Of course, I made it to the bottom without falling. And I found M, sitting on a park bench, reading, which she happily did for much of the day. I think she’s halfway through Stephen King’s Under the Dome, which she’s hoping to finish before we go back so she doesn’t have to lug the book onto the plane. (At more than 1000 pages, it’s what my brother calls one of King’s beasts.) Although it would be nice if she were more interested in climbing he sides of mountains with me, I’m happy that she lets me be adventurous. I can leave her with a book on a bench near a cafe for most of the day and she’ll be fine. Though, like me not wanting to climb the mountain alone, she doesn’t want to sit and read alone.

After almost six hours of sitting in a cafe overlooking the ocean, we finally decided we were hungry. We drove to Calheta, found a restaurant that was an overpriced tourist trap (though the espada with wine and garlic was excellent, according to M) and then came back to the guest house. Tomorrow we leave here, heading to Funchal where we’ll stay our last night at a hotel close to the airport. Since our flight on Friday is at 7:25am, staying nearby will make our last day a little more pleasant.