{"id":30698,"date":"2022-02-02T16:35:05","date_gmt":"2022-02-02T16:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hopcycling.pl\/?p=30698"},"modified":"2024-12-06T11:11:51","modified_gmt":"2024-12-06T11:11:51","slug":"madera-wpis-taki-sam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hopcycling.pl\/en\/madera-wpis-taki-sam\/","title":{"rendered":"Madeira: entry the same as others"},"content":{"rendered":"
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It's hard to write something about Madeira that hasn't been available on the internet yet. Especially when you go there without a bicycle. I found out about it when I started googla\u0107<\/em> what to do at all. The first result: a dozen or so strollers, a few places - great, read, marked on the map, we keep going. Another result: exactly the same. Still the same. Foreign entries - the same. The initial excitement about the trip subsided a bit, because how is it? When everyone recommends the same thing, it gets dangerous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Other blogs better<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

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So, if you are looking for practical information about Madeira, please visit elsewhere: <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

60 carefully written routes (EN): https:\/\/www.journeyera.com\/madeira-hikes\/<\/em><\/a>
Poorly described routes, but more legible and with a rating + appka (EN): https:\/\/walkmeguide.com\/en\/madeira\/trails-list\/<\/em><\/a>
Polish island guide: https:\/\/coupleaway.com\/przewodnik-madera\/<\/em><\/a>
Entry for lazy people with a map and in Polish: https:\/\/www.mamasaidbecool.pl\/madera-atrakcje-punkty-widokowe-mapa\/<\/em><\/a>
for this, of course, classics like By bus through the world<\/a>, Wheels Toczy<\/a> and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So I invite you to enter the same entry as the existing ones, but with worse photos and a much lower level of excitement, knowledge and details. But with more skepticism!<\/strong> If you ask me why read this - I answer: I don't know.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Prices.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I like to write about prices. Blog entries do not disappear and regularly, a few years after each publication, I receive e-mails with the content "Hey, but these prices are from your butt there. We were and it was more expensive "<\/em>. Thanks to these e-mails, I can read these messages aloud at random moments in my life in the company: "hey, do you know that the accommodation in the Californian hotel that I recommended 3 years ago is now twice as expensive?" Everyone then laughs to death. I mean, if I were in company, they would laugh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We buy a trip to Madeira on Thursday afternoon. This information is important because the departure is at 6 am on Saturday, which is about 1.5 days later. We catch last-minute on the website of ... ITAKA travel agency. This is our first "organized trip". For very good flights on time (Saturday departure - Sunday return) and a very nice hotel, we pay just over PLN 2,000 per head for 8 days. Hotel Duas Torres<\/a> it's cool because it has a kitchenette, sea view and it is in front of Portugal's best store - Pingo Doce (Jeronimooo!). And the hotel manager threw us champagne to our room for Sylwia's birthday, but this, of course, does not affect the assessment. Unless other hotel managers are reading this then it has. It was better cost-effective than organizing the trip yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We pay 15 euros a day for a car from Guerin rental. It is worth adding that we do not take the cheapest one, because we know well that on vacation you get fat and that the hills in Madeira are steep - we need a power reserve. Just like the white Clio has. Until the end of the trip, we look at everyone in Smarts and 500 with superiority *. The times when the whole company had to leave the bus before the climbs on Traffik trips to the Tatra Mountains taught us a lot. We pay 56 euros for fuel to drive 900 km. A lot of kilometers, because we drive most suboptimal<\/em>. Something like my attempts to approach the traveling salesman algorithm in college.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*except when one of my favorite photographers in the country parks on our favorite beach, but by the time I believe Sylwia he is, we're a long way off. Then I look with admiration. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

- I cannot write that the traditional Madeiran bread tastes like a garlic baguette from Biedronka<\/p>

- But it tastes like that<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Most restaurants cost between 10 and 20 euros per dish. For a grazing double dinner consisting of soups, main course and dessert, we usually pay about 20-30 euro per person. From restaurants worth mentioning: Tradicional<\/a> (because a lot, tasty and rich) and And Pipa<\/a> (because it is one of those "hidden, tourist, hacked<\/em>"Places).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Generally it is cheap. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Madeira doesn't.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For years, the words of Wojtek have been pounding in my head. He once said that if he takes a ready track from someone, it then feels like he is living his life. I have the same thing with trips, which I base on what I can find on other blogs. In the case of Madeira, it was felt like never before, even though I had about 2 days to prepare. When on every blog you see the same photos, the same places and the same walking routes, it is impossible to turn off the lights of being someone else. Because does this place offer nothing more than the "top 10\/20 best Madeira hikes"? This is the Stelvio effect. You are in places that you haven't been, and it feels like you've already been there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This leads to a situation where someone sees a cool photo on the internet and decides: I have to go there, do the same so that others would be jealous and want to go there too and have such a photo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From my humble view, this is also the case in Madeira. number miradours<\/em> is enormous, the list of strollers as well, but you are unlikely to discover anything new. Most of them are marked on google maps, and almost everything within 2-3 hours from the island's capital. Not only that, there is even a special asphalt road leading to most of them, ended with a parking lot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And guess what? That's okay. Madeira is worth it.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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While on the first day I was a bit skeptical after seeing the most famous cliffs of the island, each subsequent day surprised me more. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest disadvantage of Madeira (for me) is the fact that the trails do not form meaningful loops. In order not to return the same road, our tours are over 20-30 km long and cover the walks with asphalt. Of course, you can count on a taxi at the target parking lot, but I will illustrate the problem differently. The most popular mountain route is about 7 km - with a 3-hour walk. To return by taxi from the target parking lot to the initial one, you have to overcome 37km asphalt (over an hour's drive). There are some buses, but they are an option for people with an unlimited amount of time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Madeira yes.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Madeira is for me an island of a very active pensioner - in a positive sense, of course. Mental, not physical, pensioner. A tired man who does not want to plan too much, but just wants to walk among the trees, go for a walk in the mountains, look at the ocean, eat like a pig with seafood and massacre with Poncha (their more lemon). And that's all in the release weatherproof<\/em>because it's gonna be fun anyway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Overall it's great and I hope the photos are enough to prove it. If not - I refer to other blogs. Madeira is a place where you can relax. It is clean, nice, pleasant and touristic. The exact opposite of most places we normally visit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Madeira I don't know.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The weather in winter has little to do with what you expect from a "trip to warm countries". Near the ocean it is stable 15-20 degrees, at the peaks it is stable 5-10 degrees. A week after our departure, snow is falling on Rouvio. We had such a wind that it kidnapped small children, and their parents later found them somewhere in Tenerife or the Azores. In preparation for the trip, I suggest you buy waterproof shoes, socks, pants and a jacket with a hood, and then enter a bathtub filled with water. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Then you can think about it, conclude that all this water resistance makes no sense and accept being wet. Because it rains a lot. Even when it is not raining, it still rains ... or it does not rain, but it flies from a waterfall. Or it's raining a little. Or it's raining at the hotel, and not 30 minutes away by car. And vice versa. Same with visibility. The advantage is that we could do the same route every day and it would look completely different each time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madeira kills.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my opinion, dark weather suits this island much more than a full lamp (unless you prefer beaching<\/em> on stones). Madeira is a bit deceptive though. The trails are well marked, secured in such a way that even a person with an above-average fear of heights can manage and everything seems simple. It is exactly like in any Jurassic Park movie - nice, idyllic, vacation and suddenly a tyrannosaur bites your head off. It is not difficult to do in Madeira. In all this bliss it is easy to forget that if the wave pulls you from the promenade into the sea, you will never sail out. If you put your foot wrong on a 400-meter cliff, you will have a lot of time in flight to think about this mistake. Or finally, when you discover that the stones on the road were not placed there, but fell off the slope. In my opinion, this is a place where it is easy to die. Worst of all, it's easy to die stupidly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not Morocco, no one here will say that you died of exhaustion, far from civilization, in the Atlas Mountains, and your dried remains were eaten by wild animals. Here, when you die, the family will say "well, you died on a walk by stumbling on an all-inclusive trip". A beautiful epitaph for this brave cyclist, who fought so bravely at the Tatra Road Race<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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Madeira by bike.<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If there is any place where I have been without a bike and I have not regretted it (and there are not many of them), Madeira is definitely it. Because yes, the roads are, even pretty cool. You can even find some side, less frequented. They have great views and I suspect that the asphalt between Pico Areeiro and the Valley of the Nuns or the ER110 road I would call "epic", but it's probably not worth it. The slopes are too large and too frequent. I have never been in a place where such steep and long climbs were crammed so close together. If I lived in Madeira, I would love to have a bicycle, but if I were going there for less than 3 weeks, I would have the impression that I am missing the best of everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here, even in the tunnels, it's so steep that you can't pretend to be a professional Livigno cyclist who wants to stay dry despite the rain in training. Sorry, hermetic again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although, of course, there are many people on the island with large shock absorbers and I believe that they have a lot of fun from the descents. However, they have to come back by bus - such skiing, but cycling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bicycles are already attacking us at the airport. When I stand at the car rental desk, 10 NS Bikes cartons pass me by. Even then, however, I am almost sure that no one normal is doing a big group trip here and it must be for a photo session. Well, unless it's a trip aimed at mastering the perfection of removing tires from the rim in combat conditions - a course for the most outstanding and talented. Sorry, such a hermetic joke from Rondo.<\/p>\n\n\n