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Clare
Clare

Day 3: Cabo Girão and Ponta do Sol

I had been planning to make a slightly earlier start this morning than yesterday, but I got unexpectedly awoken around 7am by Tim running into the room and switching lights on. There was a loud noise of water, like one of us was taking a shower, except neither of us were. Someone on the floor above, however, seemed to be and water was starting to pour through our ceiling :o

It was rather dramatic! I hurried to get dressed while Tim rushed downstairs to show the footage to someone on reception. They assured him that maintenance would come and sort it out, so we sat tight and waited for them. In the meantime, fortunately, the person above finished their shower and the water stopped dripping through, though the floor of the bathroom was now rather flooded. It seemed that maintenance didn't normally start working until 8am, but at some point after that multiple workmen arrived to take a look. They were followed by cleaning staff, who very promptly mopped everything up. 

The workmen disappeared, presumably upstairs to the source of the leak. We weren't really sure what was happening, so went to get breakfast. Shortly after we returned, we got a phone call from reception telling us that we needed to move rooms. There was another room on the same floor which we'd be able to move to, but that was currently occupied and the people weren't checking out until 12pm. So we were told that we needed to pack up all our things into our suitcases, then after the other people checked out and the room had been cleaned, someone would move our suitcases to the new room and we'd get a new key.

There was me thinking that because for once we were spending an entire week in the same accommodation that we wouldn't have a load of packing and unpacking xD Never mind, we eventually got everything packed up and were able to head out to the car.

As it had been a bit of an odd start to the morning, we decided not to go too far and drive to a nearby attraction: Cabo Girão. Cabo Girão is the enormous cliff which we'd been able to see from our hotel balcony.

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Cabo Girão is one of the highest cliffs in Europe.

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In fact, I think it's one of the highest sea cliffs in the world.

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You can park and buy a ticket for €2 to walk to a viewpoint known as the Skywalk.

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At this point you're 580 metres above sea level.

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And you can look through the glass floor to the sea below, which is a bit vertigo-inducing!

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It was a very, very long way down to the sea.

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Once we'd finished admiring the views we continued down the coast to a small village called Ponta do Sol.

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I'd read that this was one of the prettiest villages in Madeira, and there were some beautiful pastel-coloured buildings.

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Unfortunately, we had some problems parking here.

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Although we found a parking spot near the seafront without too much difficulty, we couldn't work out how to pay. The machine took coins, which we didn't have, but as an alternative it was supposed to be possible to pay via an app. I downloaded the app, went through the tedious process of registering an account and recording the registration details of the hire car... only to find that it wouldn't accept payment via UK bank cards.

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In the end Tim decided to stay with the car, while I went for a quick walk round to see the view.

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I followed a path leading out to a viewpoint which stuck out into the sea.

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As I got further round I could start to see back towards the village.

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It looked really beautiful from here with all its colourful buildings.

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And there were some nice views of waves breaking on the rocks too.

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Once I'd taken some photos I walked back to find Tim, who luckily hadn't encountered any traffic wardens!

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We decided to drive back to Funchal to see whether there was any progress with our new hotel room. There wasn't – it hadn't been cleaned yet – so we went to a local supermarket to stock up on supplies, before stopping at a restaurant where we had enormous lasagnes for lunch.

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It was around 3pm by the time we got back to the hotel and we were finally able to get into the new room.

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It is indeed pretty similar to the previous room, and the hotel staff had moved all our suitcases and backpacks in for us.

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We're on the opposite side of the hotel this time, so when I walked out onto the balcony the first thing I saw was a view of a small banana plantation!

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In the other direction we can still see a bit of the sea.

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We unpacked all our things again and settled into the new room. While Tim sat down to catch up on some work, I went out for a stroll by the sea before it got dark.

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I followed the promenade we'd been on yesterday, but in the opposite direction away from Funchal.

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Madeira is full of road tunnels through the hills and to my surprise, even the coastal footpath turned out to involve a short tunnel :o 

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Once I emerged from the tunnel I was down by the beach, which looked rather pebbly, with a good view towards Cabo Girão.

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The tunnel had taken me through this large rock.

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From here there was a nice flat path which seemed to stretch on indefinitely.

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I walked on it a little way before turning back towards the hotel.

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After a slightly strange start to the morning, the day has definitely improved :) 

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