Madeira – A Big Pointy Rock & A Steep Cable Car

November 23^rd, 2025 

We decided to partly retrace our steps from yesterday to check out a rock formation that we had just driven past and then continue beyond Porto Moniz to a cable car that Naomi had read about.

 

We lucked out with yet another beautiful sunrise.

Gotta love the view.

A beautiful morning on the northern coast.

The first stop was the crazy rock formation at Ribeira da Janela.  Just offshore were a couple of tiny rock islets but one was like a giant finger standing up out of the water.  Not something you see every day...

This looks like a geologist's wet dream!

There it is...that's what we came here for.

It didn't taste like much...

...and there's my opinion of that!

Another 360 Naomi-rama.

Naomi soaking up the scene.

Looking back from the beach as we headed back to the car to continue along the coast.

That's Porto Moniz down there, where we were yesterday.

Now it was time for the main event of the day, the Achada da Cruz Cable Car, which Naomi stated was a super steep gondola.  Turns out, it’s the steepest cable car in Europe!  It travels a distance of 600 meters while descending a staggering 481 meters!!!

Here comes a cable car.

It's a long way down!

That is steep...

The cars could fit 6 people.

Amazingly it was only 10 Euros each to go up and down on the 3-5 minute ride.  I thought that was a good deal.

Naomi's....umm, excited??  Not quite...

Starting down.

Looking south.

Now looking north.

Okay, Naomi seems alright with the gondola ride now.

Passing the other car...so only just passed halfway down.

Watching our car go back up.  I thought it was interesting that there was no staff at the bottom, tourists just self loaded onto the gondola.  There was a camera or two of course.

A super nice place to be on a super nice day!

Down at the bottom, there seemed to be the remnants of an inhabited village.  Maybe “village” is a bit generous, it was more like a dozen shacks with tiny yards cordoned off by stone walls.  The gardens were mostly overgrown with Mother Nature slowly but inevitably taking back her land.  When people did reside here, it must have felt like they were living on a tiny remote island as there is on road access, especially before the gondola was installed.

Walking along the coastline.

Oh look, the gondola!

It seemed to be an old, no longer permanently inhabited village.

It was almost 1 pm, and only now the sun is starting to poke out.

Some tourists enjoying a drink on a little deck of a cafe.

Beautiful.

Looking back from the furthest point to the south that we could walk.

This rock wall was chock full of geckos soaking up the sun.

Briefly checking out that little cafe.  We didn't bother stopping for a drink.

Heading back to the gondola.

We spent about 30-45 minutes wandering around before returning to the base of the cable car.   There was a lineup to get back up to the top, and it was easy to estimate the wait time by counting the number of people and figuring out how many cable carloads that was…provided every gondola was filled up, which they were even though there wasn’t a staff member to organize the various sized groups.  Well done everyone.  It was a little more than a half an hour before we were on our way up.

On our way back up.

Looking down at the bottom station...that's a long way down.

We hadn’t anticipated that we would spend so long down at the bottom of the gondola and it was now after 3:30 pm so we decided it was time to make our way back to our hotel and enjoy a bit of relaxing before heading back to the pizzeria (second time in three nights) in the evening.

There were still some gorgeous views on our drive back to the hotel.

Tonight is our last night at the Quinta do Furao and our penultimate night on the island.  Tomorrow, we’ll stay closer to the airport for our morning flight out to Lisbon.