“All you need is Madeira”

“All you need is love” – is the song my nice Teacher nuno sings all the day. Especially when he sees my more and more longer (Beatles)hair. But now I’m able to sing back: “All you need is Madeira!” – and this is true 😉

A few weeks ago a “travel group” of two finish and one german traveled to Madeira. Reason was more or less a special cheap offer of two flightcompanies and the cheap hotel costs on this beautiful Island in the alantic. So we had a wonderful flight … and the problems on Madeira began. First we were picked up by the man of the car-rental company – he brought us to the “normal” car renatal-company, where we should get our car. But not before we paid an extra fee. Why? Because we (esp. Ville) is actually not older than 25. And between 21 and 25 you have to pay an extra fee of 90€ for the incurance…But – after a while we get also the car and could start to discover the Island.

Before I am going to describe the Island, the possiblities to go swimming and the weather I will write something to our beautiful hotel. For shure – we’re volunteers and we are poor. So we booked the cheapest hotel we could get. 10€ per each – including breakfast. The beds were more or less okay – but the rest. Muito male…Espacially the shower was more than horrible. But – we had been there one to sleep or to take a nap 😉

So we start to discover the Island Madeira – and this is really nice. You can imagine Madeira as a country with a lot of palm-trees, a bit joungle, a lot mountains and a lot of tourists. The capital of Madeira is Funchal with nearly 200.000 habitans. But you can go their by feet very easy and everything is close to each other. The most shops are “cheap” but very touristic. If you’re passing a few restaurants during the evening there will be a lot of “sellers” who start to talk with you and offer the “best” and cheapest menu.

After discovering the “downtown” we decided to “discover” the “beach”. Okay. Short answer. There is no beach on Madeira. There are youst black, hart rocks. All over the island. And that’s really stupid. during our three days we had been there we tried to find some beaches. We just found one “fake” beach infornt of a big, big ugly hotel. Okay – so you can noticed – if you are going to Madeira you can do hiking, jogging, shopping – but not swimming. That’s really shitty. 🙁

But Madeira is although nice. On the top of the beautiful small mountains you can see always the mountains. Further one you can see a lot of banana-plants, canyons and high waves. And – everything is close to each other and you are in 45 Minutes at the end of the island. That’s cool and you save fuel and money. Very usefull for volunteers 🙂

At the end I want to give you one more hint. Go to Madeira, discover everything. Go also to the neighbour island Porto Santo (it must be nice 😉 ) – but don’t book your flights with easyjet. We did it and 20 minutes before “normally” start of our flight, we already checked-in and passed the security gate, the decided to cancled the flight because of the weather. However – we didn’t get money just a flight back at the evening at 6 o’clock. So we had to wait on the “Airport” of Funchal, which is not bigger than a normal trainstation in Finnland 😉 – We took a taxi, ate very well and played UNO. Very nice.

Afterwards we’re lucky that we are still alive and looking back to a nice weekend with a lot of fun, beautiful impressions and the necessity to say to a lot of people: “All you need is Madeira!”