Madeira day 1 - We took a shower at a free carwash

 (the title is not a clickbait, really)

        5th of November, 8 in the morning, the plane takes off from Lisbon Airport and lands one hour and a half later on the magical lands of Madeira. At the airport exit our new rented car was waiting for us. We hopped in it, went to Auto Rent a Car to sign the papers for the rental and finally arrived at our accomodation in Funchal, the capital of the island. Because it was to early to check in, we decided to take a peak of the surroundings and eat something. After lunch, we took our room, left all our baggages and packed for today’s tour.

        Being the first day and with half of the day already gone, we decided to take it easy today, see the surroundings. Of course I had a very big list of things I wanna do and see in Madeira, but 6 days weren’t enough, so I already started to tick things off my list.

        First thing you notice when you arrive in Madeira is their banana trees. They are absolutely everywhere. They grow like, I don’t know...grass beside the sidewalk? Also, you MUST try their bananas, they are so different than the ones you buy from your grocery store, and also VERY TASTY!

        Therefore, we made a stop at Ponta do Sol at Cascata dos Anjos. This is a waterfall that springs from the mountain and pours down right in the middle of the road bellow. The whole wall of the mountain is covered in water and it is draining literally from everywhere. Of course we prepared ourselves with swimsuits, like who wouldn’t prepare with this? I think all people from there just forgot to take their swimsuits or were just passing by and saw this waterfall and stopped, that’s the reason why they weren’t prepared! But we were! And we went right bellow the pouring cold waterfall in November. It wasn’t that bad though, we had so much fun and took some crazy pictures here. Also people were often disturbed by the cars passing by on the road just to get a free carwash. Because why not? We did it too after 😉.

         After we dried ourselves up, we headed to...I don’t know how is it called, we just saw it in our way and decided to stop. I’ll add bellow a map of the place. On Maps I find it under the name "Brucke", but that means “bridge”. Indeed there is an old stone bridge and once you cross it you go under an arch naturally formed by the mountain. From here you can watch some of the nicest sunsets in the ocean. Unfortunatelly for us, today it was cloudy, but we caught it another day.

        We took a fast walk in Funchal and then went to Continente supermarket to buy ourselves some food for the next day. Because tomorrow starts the true adventure and I can’t wait to tell the story of the second day in Madeira.