Madeira Day 7 | Paul da Serra – Porto Moniz
Hiking 13.8 km Ascent: 200 m Descent: 1360 m Max Elevation: 1196 m
Goooooood morning ………..Cows. What the hell. We are surrounded!!!!
We both woke up pretty early. There were some weird noise, coming from outside.Bella and I were both pretty scared, after open the tent it was clear. The cow herd surrounded us. It was a trap.
Since the cows where eating outside, we had our lunch inside. Spaghetti Bolognese, don’t worry all cows are still alive… Real Turmat makes amazing food. The best we ever had, but also not cheap. We used Bella’s new camping dish. ☺
We had to make two coffees today, because I kicked the coffee pot during the first attempt. After a small discussion, we decided to go outside and take our tent down, super slow.
The only downside was, it was still raining and our tent was a pool, again.
We followed the road, the weather was a bit depressing. Earlier we refilled all bottles, because we were scared that we run into the same problem, than the last two days.
The PR 13 which should leads us to Ribeira de Janela, was wonderful. The landscape looked like New Zealand. Gently curved mountains and huge dreamy trees. Lush meadows with cows grazing near the trail.
It was so pretty that we didn’t real pay attention, where we were heading. We followed the GPS blindly.
Suddenly the trek was going down like hell. 30° degrees!!!!! I though, today it will be a nice easy walk down. The GPS said we were still on the right way, but it didn’t felt like this.
The Path continued like this for an hour, I even had to make hiking sticks for Bella, because it was simple to steep and no end in sight. The trail was just an old river bed and it seems that had done the trail in ages. But we were committed.
Solid 4h 30m later we reach the end of the “trail” and what we tough Porto Moniz. At a tap, we made our self “civilization ready”. Being clean felt great.
But “Porto Moniz” looked completely different than we expected. There wasn’t any natural swimming pool and it was also really tiny. Slowly we realize that our adventure wasn’t over yet. We were in the wrong valley.
I was getting angry … what happened. I started yelling at Bella. We both walked down into the valley. During our descent Bella checked the GPS once more.
Yesterday night, we change the Profile from hiking in to climbing. Which means that the GPS is searching for every climb, it can offer and goes for it. What a disaster. The only upside was, that there was a huge street connecting Porto Moniz with Ribera de Janela.- Through a tunnel, a big one.
Reaching the bottom of the valley, we realize that there is a small path right at the ocean connecting the two towns with each other. Luckily, we didn’t had to go through the tunnel, which would have been scary.
The final few kilometer passed by so quickly. We both were super happy to finally reach Porto Moniz. We did it, at the town sign, we knew nothing will stop us know. Our backpacks didn’t feel like 18 kilos anymore. What an epic adventure.
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