The Madeira Botanical Gardens

Santa Catarina Park   

On Thursday 5 October we had a failed attempt at visiting the Madeira Botanical Gardens. The gardens were one of the few things open on the Republic Day bank holiday but by the time that we had done some admin on board and then turned up at the cable car station we found it to be crammed with hundreds of people queuing to go up. Two cruise ships had docked in Funchal that morning and it appeared that a large number of their passengers were on the Botanical Gardens tour. Rather than spend the rest of the day in queues, we cut our losses and instead had a picnic lunch in the Santa Catarina Park just above the harbour. The afternoon allowed some more routine home admin to be ticked off before we hosted Eric Forsyth on board BV for sundowners and dinner. Eric had invited us to rum cocktails on board his yacht, S/Y Fiona, on the Tuesday evening when we had just arrived in Funchal. We had a fascinating evening with him that night and an equally fun evening with him on this evening too.

The following day there were no queues at the cable car station but there was some low cloud first thing which was a bit of a concern because the cable car would be taking us about 5 km up the hillside to a point 550 metres above sea level.

The Valley of Ribeira de João Gomes    

We set off up the hill enjoying the bird’s eye views of Funchal, peering down into people’s gardens and the odd banana plantation or two. As we got higher we also saw that a lot of the houses were now just shells, apparently fire damaged.

The cable car was a long run and it took about 15 minutes to get to the top. There, we followed signs for a second cable car to take us on to the Botanical Gardens. We had struggled to see this cable car from sea level and, once we were on it, it was clear why. It runs back down the hillside but is suspended in the Valley of Ribeira de João Gomes. This valley is quite dramatic but has obviously been the scene of a forest fire relatively recently, with blackened trees sticking up through new growth.

View down over Funchal from the Botanical Gardens   

Bizarrely the Botanical Gardens cable car took us about half way back down the hillside but we were still high enough to get good views down over Funchal.

Perched on the shoulder of a ridgeline, the Botanical Gardens have a series of terraces stepped down the hillside. Cool, wooded areas sit above terraces of more formal gardens and, below them, cacti and tropical palms.

It is a fabulous place to wander around with a huge diversity of plants. The literature claims that there are over 2000 examples of exotic plants from all continents displayed in the 35,000 m² of gardens.

I seemed to have taken several photographs of the upper levels but none of the lower levels with cacti and palm trees – must have got all gardened out by that stage!

A climb back up all of the terraces brought us back to the top entrance to the gardens and the cable car station. From here we took the Botanical Gardens cable car back up to Monte, high up on the hillside.

Funchal, Madeira, Portugal