Wandergliding: Madeira - Hiking Balcoes, Views at Porta da Cruz & Cristo Rei

November 18^th, 2025

One of the most popular activities to do while in Madeira is hiking. There are many hikes that could keep one busy for weeks. We planned to do a few while visiting the island. Naomi had a wise idea to start with a really easy hike, the “Verada dos Balcoes”, which literally translates to “Path of Counters” (I had assumed it was “balconies”, but that was incorrect).

Good morning Madeira!

After driving about 30-40 minutes north, up the spine of the island, we reached the trailhead. It was an out and return type trail, only 1.5 kilometres each way and hardly any elevation gain or loss. In fact, it was so easy that busloads of seniors were showing up with many retired folks managing the walk with relative ease.

Driving through the forest.

Starting to get into the mist.

The start of the trail.

It was a pretty lush forest.

We found a little bit of Canadiana. Yes, there are maple trees here...although they are not native, they were introduced here.

Our first view from the trail.

The forest was lush and green, with a good chunk of the trail lined by a concrete channel or swale, funneling water downhill.

Naomi loves the "swale by the trail", which is really an aqueduct or irrigation channel.

A random chicken on the trail.

Yup, it was an easy trail...

The rewarding vista at the end of the trail.

It didn’t take long for us to reach the viewpoint where there were about 30 other tourists soaking up the lovely vista. We snapped a few photos and then noticed that some people were feeding some little birds, who were happy to hop onto their open hands to peck away at some bird seed. One woman offered some bird food to us and with out really thinking what we were doing, we quickly found ourselves enjoying having the little guys stand on our palms while they had some lunch as we snapped some photos.

The crowd at the viewpoint.

Feeding the locals.

Naomi's turn.

We were ready to leave and were about to pass the seeds on to any other tourist who was interested when a German female guide in her late 50s stated out loud that it was not good to feed the birds. Although we weren’t the only ones doing it, it felt like the scorn was aimed at us. She was right, and we should have known better, but we just got swept up in the moment. At least it was appropriate food for these feathered fellows. We headed on our way, and I kept an eye out for any signs condemning the activity but didn’t see any…still, whoops, our bad.

Back at our rental car, we decided to drive towards the north side of the island, which was only about 5-10 kilometres away on a windy, hilly but well paved road. That was one thing we really noticed during our time in Madeira, the roads were generally fantastic, all recently paved it seemed.

A nice viewpoint by the side of the road.

On a whim, we pulled into a small seaside village called Porto da Cruz. The place had a small bay with dark, rounded rocks for a beach. To the west of the beach was a massive, almost vertical, 1000-foot cliff that dominated the area. We enjoyed watching a few seagulls get propelled skyward in the ridge lift from the sea breeze. On the other side of the beach was a small promontory and we walked part way around it to see the view along the north coast to the eastern tip of the island.

At Porto da Cruz.

The beach...no sand, just big, round, black rocks.

A surfer had the bay to himself.

That cliff is probably at least 1000 feet tall.

Enjoying the view...

Hard to see, but there is a hole in the island on the left.

Life is good.

I had hoped to take another windy road over the small mountains of the island on our way back, but somehow, we ended up on the highway that runs along the coast. Due to the hilly nature of this island, there are many, and I mean many, tunnels ranging from a hundred meters to over 2 kilometres in length. They definitely speed up travel around Madeira.

We passed by the airport…and not just passed by but drove under part of the runway! Madeira’s airport is known as one of the trickier airports to land at in the world (some lists put it in the top 10 most dangerous airports). The runway used to only be 1600 meters long but there was an accident in 1977 where a commercial jet went off the end of the runway and crashed onto a beach, killing 131 of 164 people on board. This resulted in the runway being extended 200 more meters a few years later. In 2000, the runway was extended again, to 2781 meters so that big commercial jets could land there. This was a big undertaking as the runway now extended over the ocean, so a platform supported by 180 concrete columns were poured to support the runway…wow!

Driving under the extended part of the runway at the Madeira Airport.

Our last stop of the day was to check out a 14-meter statue of Jesus Christ, called Cristo Rei. Not quite as spectacular as the one in Rio de Janeiro (not that I’ve been there) but still cool to check out.

A gondola going down to the beach near the Cristo de Rei.