I went on a tour and before heading inland up to the valley, we went to Camara de Lobos on the coast, west of Funchal. It is a traditional fishing village and is very popular with tourists. It was the first place to be settled in 1419. Winston Churchill used to come here and paint.
Câmara de Lobos translates as ‘The Chamber of the Wolves’, as the area was once the habitat of the endangered monk seal.
View of the tall cliffs of Cabo Girao, which I visited later -
We then headed back towards Funchal and stopped at a viewpoint at Pico dos Barcelos. The footballer Cristiano Ronaldo used to live in a village near here -
We then started going uphill to the Valley of the Nuns. Went to eucalyptus forests. Stopped at Eira do Serrado and walked up to a view point over the Nuns Valley.
This is the part of Nuns Valley that we later went to -
Apparently the nuns ran away to this valley during the pirate invasion in the 1600s. There are no nuns there today. There is a new road tunnel linking the valley to the outside world.
Down in the valley, looking up at the Eira do Serrado viewpoint which is on the tip of the tall mountain on the left of the photo -
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