Seixal, Madeira, Portugal

The Island of Madeira at the Heart


The Old ER-101
Troubled Pool
Faith Above the Abyss
Laje Beach II
North facing homes
Bride's Veil
Volcanic Eden
Cornering Houses
atlantic pool
the village
Tunnel to the Sea
Seixal and the Great North
Bride's Veil II
The New Beach
Laje Beach
Marine Conviviality
The Escarpments of the Village
Visitors to Madeira are enchanted by its almost tropical drama. In this case, the author must confess that it was the destination of his first three plane trips. That he has a friend from there, who made him be a bit from there. From the Madeira facing the endless North. From the fearless and welcoming Seixal.

Having a debut flight, on Christmas Day, with a landing at Funchal airport is worthy of note.

What to say then, when, after that landing, there is a journey by car between Funchal and Seixal, along the old road.

Two decades passed. The memory lingers. Hostess and expert on the way, Sofia Lima takes the wheel.

She takes us up and down the lethal ravines between São Vicente and Seixal, with the confidence of a rally driver that leaves us somewhere between enthusiasm and fear.

We enter and exit tunnels with poorly polished surfaces that demonstrate the hard work of pickaxes and the like, begun in 1950 and popularized as “pierced”.

Leaving them, we are left with the Atlantic either in front or on the side, often far below, where the waves punish the cliffs.

In the middle of winter, waterfalls bathe the narrow road and wash the car by force.

Large basaltic pebbles that accumulate next to the wall that protects vehicles from diving into the ocean, remind us that it is not just water that falls there.

They underlined the obvious fact that every trip to Seixal was an adventure. And Seixal hadn't even started.

We arrived about night. We settled in the inn that Sofia had reserved for us.

Shortly afterwards, we are having drinks at the “Arco-Íris” the unavoidable bar of the village, Manelito and Carlucho. And getting to know the hostess's cronies.

Seixal, the Oitavas, the Lapinhas and an Unbridled Party

It lasts as long as it lasts. In Madeira, traditions such as the Catholic faith are taken seriously.

In the calendar, December 26 dictates the Octaves of Christmas, so venerated that the authorities declared the day a regional holiday.

Seixal, Madeira Island, the Village

It is customary to go from house to house, in the religious version, appreciating the lapinhas (read nativity scene) of the neighbors.

In profaned practice, the custom serves as a pretext for a revelry that is as itinerant as it is rooted.

More than showing off the house's lapinha, each family welcomes visitors with food and drinks left over from Christmas (but not only) and neat. In the drinks, in particular, there are whiskeys and old brandies, homemade wine produced with local jaqué grapes and many others.

They offer themselves to the stranger with a kindness and firmness that do not seem to admit refusal. As time passes, accepting them produces unexpected effects.

When the visits begin, Lisbon friends stick together. Halfway through, without even knowing how, the group breaks up into different homes in Seixal.

I remember visiting some alone. One of them belonged to a couple of emigrants who had just returned from South Africa, proud to be able to taste the jaqué wine that linked them to the land. To Seixal and Madeira.

Later, we got back together in the “Arco-Íris”. At the counter, around the foosball table and more Coral Tónica. Each one, with their amazing stories to tell.

As we would come to understand, in Seixal, the Oitavos lasted, like, the whole week. Discovering the stunning scenery of the village and its surroundings compensated for waking up late and somewhat hungover at the “Brisa Mar” hotel.

A few days later, we returned to Lisbon. With lives still teeming with everything we had experienced in Seixal. With new friendships, some of stonecutters, then, living on the mainland.

The Summer Return to Seixal

We arrived at summer vacation. Marques, one of those bricklayers with whom I kept in touch, invites me to return. He offers to stay with his family. I gladly accept the invitation.

Filipe, one of Marques' brothers, at the time and like so many Madeirans, still an emigrant in Caracas, Venezuela, spearfished in the offshore sea, as a rule, in front of the pier and the natural pools.

Day after day, this is how he assures us of fresh fish that his mother cooks for meals, accompanied by sweet potatoes and boiled semilhas, harvested from the house's garden.

Instead of the Christmas Oitavos and Lapinhas, it is the summer festivities in Seixal and neighboring towns that justify the festivities and the inevitable madness.

In the middle of the summer, this fun has a delightful bathing area. In the natural pools of Seixal. Off the Pier. In Poça do Mata Sete, baptized with the truth of the tragedy, however poignant it may have been.

And, a short distance away, but on the opposite side of seriousness, in Praia da Laje, which locals have come to call Jamaica due to the tropical look of the palm trees planted there a few years ago.

Despite the good-natured Caribbean imagination, its seafront has no traces of white sand or coral.

It is covered by large basaltic pebbles that the waves continue to polish and that inspire the coat of arms of the village, at the base of a complementary pebble (tree).

At the time of this bathing evasion, there was not even the black sand beach adjacent to the port, which today attracts thousands of visitors to the village every year.

When I bathe in it overlooking the grandiose landscape of the east of the North, I confirm that it is the best beach on the island of Madeira.

So I would classify it even if I considered myself exempt.

The Incredible Golden Road Monument

We go back along the old road and its tunnels between São Vicente and Seixal. We examine them with the attention they deserve.

We understand the work, the prodigious engineering and the costs that it required, to such an extent that it became known as the Golden Road of Portugal.

To arrive at the true value of the work, perhaps it is better to pay attention to the delays in life that it solved. For a long time, Porto Moniz was only reachable from the south of the island.

And, in periods of bad weather, a journey between the Funchal and Seixal (today 40km, 50 minutes), was done in the form of a roller coaster, up and down the crest of Encumeada. It could take four hours.

Or five. Or whatever they were, according to what fate had in store.

More than two decades later, on our way back to Madeira and Seixal, we travel through several of the modern and spacious tunnels that connect the towns in the interior of the island.

Today, between old and new, more than 150 tunnels make Madeira a Swiss cheese island.

Those from João Delgado and Seixal, replaced the daring ER-101, which has become a historic and tourist attraction, still with its adventurous touch.

Misadventures in Old ER101

We leave the modern road. We get into the old one, committed to recovering the feeling of what it was like to walk through it. Moments later, we regretted it.

The remains of the road seem even tighter than we remember.

It is soaked by different waterfalls whose origin we fail to understand.

Parts of the worn asphalt are speckled with splinters of basalt also fallen from the top, imperceptibly from there, of the cliffs.

Rather than playful, the experience turns out to be reckless. We reverse gear as quickly and as well as we can, in the tightness and imminence of the precipice, with the Atlantic, down there, insinuating itself.

We didn't know it yet, but daring came with a price. During the afternoon, we realized that one of the basalt chips had caused a slow puncture in a tire. When we passed through São Vicente, we wasted time fixing it.

The maneuver completed, we returned to the safety of the new road.

We take refuge at the Véu da Noiva viewpoint, the emblematic waterfall that plunges 110 meters into the sea, in front of the old route of the ER-101.

A Village as Sloping as it is Fertile

If Madeira is steep and vertiginous, Seixal abuses it.

The settlement of the north coast of the island and the village required strong determination and consistent ingenuity. Most of its houses are located between cliffs and chasms.

The gardens and crops are always inclined, like the local vineyards, arranged in terraces conquered from less steep areas of the cliffs, protected from the wind and the weather by barriers of heather and leafy ferns.

Even produced in redoubts that any outsider would classify as unusable and in small quantities, Seixal sercial grapes are resistant to gravity, mildew and powdery mildew. They have long enriched good Madeira wines, the drier ones.

The irrigation of these vines and other crops depends on the use of water from the stream that descends from the top of Fanal and which divides the village almost in half, through the levadas and canals in which Madeirans and seixaleiros have become experts.

The last time we visited Seixal, we did it as part of a much broader project on the island of Madeira, outside of Christmas – New Year's Eve, the festival period or any other festivities.

We didn't stay there to sleep and we only managed to see two or three of the people we knew there.

Seixaleiros that Depart, Seixaleiros that Return

Since 1950, remote Seixal has lost population, mainly due to the diaspora to Venezuela, South Africa, Australia and many other destinations. In this time, the village went from 1360 inhabitants to just 656, in 2011.

We realize, however, that the tourist prestige of Madeira, which for several years has been elected “Best Island Destination in the World”, the attraction of the black sand beach and the access facilitated by the tunnels now take many more visitors there and from the four corners of the world.

Simultaneously, the atrocious reality in which Venezuela has been living and the violence in South Africa, have made many Madeiran emigrants return.

Even though they no longer speak Portuguese, some open small businesses with which they seek to remake their lives. Even if they lack the big profits from other stops.

Even if they only have a view to the North and the immense Atlantic.

It receives them, as it welcomed us, the subtropical and Edenic embrace of Seixal.

Pico do Arieiro - Pico Ruivo, Madeira, Portugal

Pico Arieiro to Pico Ruivo, Above a Sea of ​​Clouds

The journey begins with a resplendent dawn at 1818 m, high above the sea of ​​clouds that snuggles the Atlantic. This is followed by a winding, ups and downs walk that ends on the lush insular summit of Pico Ruivo, 1861 meters away.
Paul do Mar a Ponta do Pargo a Achadas da Cruz, Madeira, Portugal

Discovering the Madeira Finisterre

Curve after curve, tunnel after tunnel, we arrive at the sunny and festive south of Paul do Mar. We get goosebumps with the descent to the vertiginous retreat of Achadas da Cruz. We ascend again and marvel at the final cape of Ponta do Pargo. All this, in the western reaches of Madeira.
Funchal, Madeira

Portal to a Nearly Tropical Portugal

Madeira is located less than 1000km north of the Tropic of Cancer. And the luxuriant exuberance that earned it the nickname of the garden island of the Atlantic can be seen in every corner of its steep capital.
Ribeiro Frio Forest Park, Madeira

Ribeiro Frio Acima, on the Path of Balcões

This region of the high interior of Madeira has been in charge of repopulating the island's rainbow trout for a long time. Among the various trails and levadas that converge in its nurseries, the Parque Florestal Ribeiro Frio hides grandiose panoramas over Pico Arieiro, Pico Ruivo and the Ribeira da Metade valley that extends to the north coast.
Ilhéu de Cima, Porto Santo, Portugal

The First Light of Who Navigates From Above

It is part of the group of six islets around the island of Porto Santo, but it is far from being just one more. Even though it is the eastern threshold of the Madeira archipelago, it is the island closest to Portosantenses. At night, it also makes the fanal that confirms the right course for ships coming from Europe.
Terra Chã and Pico Branco footpaths, Porto Santo

Pico Branco, Terra Chã and Other Whims of the Golden Island

In its northeast corner, Porto Santo is another thing. With its back facing south and its large beach, we unveil a mountainous, rugged and even wooded coastline, dotted with islets that dot an even bluer Atlantic.
Porto Santo, Portugal

Praised Be the Island of Porto Santo

Discovered during a stormy sea tour, Porto Santo remains a providential shelter. Countless planes that the weather diverts from neighboring Madeira guarantee their landing there. As thousands of vacationers do every year, they surrender to the softness and immensity of the golden beach and the exuberance of the volcanic sceneries.
Aldeia da Cuada, Flores Island, Azores

The Azorean Eden Betrayed by the Other Side of the Sea

Cuada was founded, it is estimated that in 1676, next to the west threshold of Flores. In the XNUMXth century, its residents joined the great Azorean stampede to the Americas. They left behind a village as stunning as the island and the Azores.
Graciosa, Azores

Her Grace the Graciosa

Finally, we will disembark in Graciosa, our ninth island in the Azores. Even if less dramatic and verdant than its neighbors, Graciosa preserves an Atlantic charm that is its own. Those who have the privilege of living it, take from this island of the central group an esteem that remains forever.
São Jorge, Azores

From Fajã to Fajã

In the Azores, strips of habitable land at the foot of large cliffs abound. No other island has as many fajãs as the more than 70 in the slender and elevated São Jorge. It was in them that the jorgenses settled. Their busy Atlantic lives rest on them.
Capelinhos Volcano, Faial, Azores

On the trail of the Capelinhos Mistery

From one coast of the island to the opposite one, through the mists, patches of pasture and forests typical of the Azores, we discover Faial and the Mystery of its most unpredictable volcano.
Santa Maria, Azores

Santa Maria: the Azores Mother Island

It was the first in the archipelago to emerge from the bottom of the sea, the first to be discovered, the first and only to receive Cristovão Colombo and a Concorde. These are some of the attributes that make Santa Maria special. When we visit it, we find many more.
Ponta de Sao Lourenco, Madeira, Portugal

The Eastern, Somehow Extraterrestrial Madeira Tip

Unusual, with ocher tones and raw earth, Ponta de São Lourenço is often the first sight of Madeira. When we walk through it, we are fascinated, above all, with what the most tropical of the Portuguese islands is not.
Levada do Caldeirão Verde, Madeira, Portugal

Upstream, Downstream

It is just one of over a hundred prodigious canal systems that Madeirans built to irrigate crops. Its verdant, steep and dramatic scenery makes visitors to the island flow continuously along the Levada of Caldeirão Verde.
Fanal, Madeira, Portugal

Fanal. A Somehow Surreal Pasture

Irrigated by clouds arriving from the North Atlantic, the lush, green highlands of Fanal are ideal for cattle grazing. Cattle already seem to be part of the magical landscape and not even human incursions like ours seem to affect their routine.
Lion, Elephants, PN Hwange, Zimbabwe
Safari
PN Hwange, Zimbabwe

The Legacy of the Late Cecil Lion

On July 1, 2015, Walter Palmer, a dentist and trophy hunter from Minnesota killed Cecil, Zimbabwe's most famous lion. The slaughter generated a viral wave of outrage. As we saw in PN Hwange, nearly two years later, Cecil's descendants thrive.
Thorong La, Annapurna Circuit, Nepal, photo for posterity
Annapurna (circuit)
Annapurna Circuit: 13th - High camp a Thorong La to Muktinath, Nepal

At the height of the Annapurnas Circuit

At 5416m of altitude, the Thorong La Gorge is the great challenge and the main cause of anxiety on the itinerary. After having killed 2014 climbers in October 29, crossing it safely generates a relief worthy of double celebration.
Luderitz, Namibia
Architecture & Design
Lüderitz, Namibia

Wilkommen in Africa

Chancellor Bismarck has always disdained overseas possessions. Against his will and all odds, in the middle of the Race for Africa, merchant Adolf Lüderitz forced Germany to take over an inhospitable corner of the continent. The homonymous city prospered and preserves one of the most eccentric heritages of the Germanic empire.
The small lighthouse at Kallur, highlighted in the capricious northern relief of the island of Kalsoy.
Adventure
Kalsoy, Faroe Islands

A Lighthouse at the End of the Faroese World

Kalsoy is one of the most isolated islands in the Faroe archipelago. Also known as “the flute” due to its long shape and the many tunnels that serve it, a mere 75 inhabitants inhabit it. Much less than the outsiders who visit it every year, attracted by the boreal wonder of its Kallur lighthouse.
Native Americans Parade, Pow Pow, Albuquerque, New Mexico, United States
Ceremonies and Festivities
Albuquerque, USA

When the Drums Sound, the Indians Resist

With more than 500 tribes present, the pow wow "Gathering of the Nations" celebrates the sacred remnants of Native American cultures. But it also reveals the damage inflicted by colonizing civilization.
Family in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
Cities
Discovering tassie, Part 1 - Hobart, Australia

Australia's Backdoor

Hobart, the capital of Tasmania and the southernmost of Australia, was colonized by thousands of convicts from England. Unsurprisingly, its population maintains a strong admiration for marginal ways of life.
Meal
Margilan, Uzbekistan

An Uzbekistan's Breadwinner

In one of the many bakeries in Margilan, worn out by the intense heat of the tandyr oven, the baker Maruf'Jon works half-baked like the distinctive traditional breads sold throughout Uzbekistan
Culture
Jok​ülsárlón Lagoon, Iceland

The Chant and the Ice

Created by water from the Arctic Ocean and the melting of Europe's largest glacier, Jokülsárlón forms a frigid and imposing domain. Icelanders revere her and pay her surprising tributes.
Swimming, Western Australia, Aussie Style, Sun rising in the eyes
Sport
Busselton, Australia

2000 meters in Aussie Style

In 1853, Busselton was equipped with one of the longest pontoons in the world. World. When the structure collapsed, the residents decided to turn the problem around. Since 1996 they have been doing it every year. Swimming.
Traveling
Annapurna Circuit: 5th - Ngawal a BragaNepal

Towards the Nepalese Braga

We spent another morning of glorious weather discovering Ngawal. There is a short journey towards Manang, the main town on the way to the zenith of the Annapurna circuit. We stayed for Braga (Braka). The hamlet would soon prove to be one of its most unforgettable places.
Fort São Filipe, Cidade Velha, Santiago Island, Cape Verde
Ethnic
Cidade Velha, Cape Verde

Cidade Velha: the Ancient of the Tropico-Colonial Cities

It was the first settlement founded by Europeans below the Tropic of Cancer. In crucial times for Portuguese expansion to Africa and South America and for the slave trade that accompanied it, Cidade Velha became a poignant but unavoidable legacy of Cape Verdean origins.

Got2Globe Photo Portfolio
Got2Globe Portfolio

life outside

shadow vs light
History
Kyoto, Japan

The Kyoto Temple Reborn from the Ashes

The Golden Pavilion has been spared destruction several times throughout history, including that of US-dropped bombs, but it did not withstand the mental disturbance of Hayashi Yoken. When we admired him, he looked like never before.
Montserrat island, Plymouth, Soufriere volcano, buried houses
Islands
Plymouth, Montserrat

From Ashes to Ashes

Built at the foot of Mount Soufrière Hills, atop magmatic deposits, the solitary city on the Caribbean island of Montserrat has grown doomed. As feared, in 1995, the volcano also entered a long eruptive period. Plymouth is the only capital in a political territory that remains buried and abandoned.
St. Trinity Church, Kazbegi, Georgia, Caucasus
Winter White
Kazbegi, Georgia

God in the Caucasus Heights

In the 4000th century, Orthodox religious took their inspiration from a hermitage that a monk had erected at an altitude of 5047 m and perched a church between the summit of Mount Kazbek (XNUMXm) and the village at the foot. More and more visitors flock to these mystical stops on the edge of Russia. Like them, to get there, we submit to the whims of the reckless Georgia Military Road.
Couple visiting Mikhaylovskoe, village where writer Alexander Pushkin had a home
Literature
Saint Petersburg e Mikhaylovkoe, Russia

The Writer Who Succumbed to His Own Plot

Alexander Pushkin is hailed by many as the greatest Russian poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. But Pushkin also dictated an almost tragicomic epilogue to his prolific life.
Bungee jumping, Queenstown, New Zealand
Nature
Queenstown, New Zealand

Queenstown, the Queen of Extreme Sports

In the century. XVIII, the Kiwi government proclaimed a mining village on the South Island "fit for a queen".Today's extreme scenery and activities reinforce the majestic status of ever-challenging Queenstown.
Mother Armenia Statue, Yerevan, Armenia
Autumn
Yerevan, Armenia

A Capital between East and West

Heiress of the Soviet civilization, aligned with the great Russia, Armenia allows itself to be seduced by the most democratic and sophisticated ways of Western Europe. In recent times, the two worlds have collided in the streets of your capital. From popular and political dispute, Yerevan will dictate the new course of the nation.
Van at Jossingfjord, Magma Geopark, Norway
Natural Parks
Magma Geopark, Norway

A Somehow Lunar Norway

If we went back to the geological ends of time, we would find southwestern Norway filled with huge mountains and a burning magma that successive glaciers would shape. Scientists have found that the mineral that predominates there is more common on the Moon than on Earth. Several of the scenarios we explore in the region's vast Magma Geopark seem to be taken from our great natural satellite.
Kirkjubour, Streymoy, Faroe Islands
UNESCO World Heritage
Kirkjubour, streymoy, Faroe Islands

Where the Faroese Christianity Washed Ashore

A mere year into the first millennium, a Viking missionary named Sigmundur Brestisson brought the Christian faith to the Faroe Islands. Kirkjubour became the shelter and episcopal seat of the new religion.
Correspondence verification
Characters
Rovaniemi, Finland

From the Finnish Lapland to the Arctic. A Visit to the Land of Santa

Fed up with waiting for the bearded old man to descend down the chimney, we reverse the story. We took advantage of a trip to Finnish Lapland and passed through its furtive home.
Bather, The Baths, Devil's Bay (The Baths) National Park, Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands
Beaches
Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands

Virgin Gorda's Divine “Caribbaths”

Discovering the Virgin Islands, we disembark on a tropical and seductive seaside dotted with huge granite boulders. The Baths seem straight out of the Seychelles but they are one of the most exuberant marine scenery in the Caribbean.
knights of the divine, faith in the divine holy spirit, Pirenopolis, Brazil
Religion
Pirenópolis, Brazil

A Ride of Faith

Introduced in 1819 by Portuguese priests, the Festa do Divino Espírito Santo de Pirenópolis it aggregates a complex web of religious and pagan celebrations. It lasts more than 20 days, spent mostly on the saddle.
The Toy Train story
On Rails
Siliguri a Darjeeling, India

The Himalayan Toy Train Still Running

Neither the steep slope of some stretches nor the modernity stop it. From Siliguri, in the tropical foothills of the great Asian mountain range, the Darjeeling, with its peaks in sight, the most famous of the Indian Toy Trains has ensured for 117 years, day after day, an arduous dream journey. Traveling through the area, we climb aboard and let ourselves be enchanted.
Creel, Chihuahua, Carlos Venzor, collector, museum
Society
Chihuahua a Creel, Chihuahua, Mexico

On Creel's Way

With Chihuahua behind, we point to the southwest and to even higher lands in the north of Mexico. Next to Ciudad Cuauhtémoc, we visited a Mennonite elder. Around Creel, we lived for the first time with the Rarámuri indigenous community of the Serra de Tarahumara.
herd, foot-and-mouth disease, weak meat, colonia pellegrini, argentina
Daily life
Colónia Pellegrini, Argentina

When the Meat is Weak

The unmistakable flavor of Argentine beef is well known. But this wealth is more vulnerable than you think. The threat of foot-and-mouth disease, in particular, keeps authorities and growers afloat.
Serengeti, Great Savannah Migration, Tanzania, wildebeest on river
Wildlife
Serengeti NP, Tanzania

The Great Migration of the Endless Savanna

In these prairies that the Masai people say syringet (run forever), millions of wildebeests and other herbivores chase the rains. For predators, their arrival and that of the monsoon are the same salvation.
Passengers, scenic flights-Southern Alps, New Zealand
Scenic Flights
Aoraki / Mount Cook, New Zealand

The Aeronautical Conquest of the Southern Alps

In 1955, pilot Harry Wigley created a system for taking off and landing on asphalt or snow. Since then, his company has unveiled, from the air, some of the greatest scenery in Oceania.