The east is geologically the oldest part of Madeira and looks the part: worn down, red-ochre, without forest. Anyone expecting the green island is thrown at first \u2014 and then stays for exactly that contrast.<\/p>\n
Machico, 30 minutes from Funchal on the VR1, was the island’s first settlement and today holds the second imported sand beach. The airport sits in between, on a platform carried by 180 columns above the terrain \u2014 the reason the landing has the reputation it has.<\/p>\n
Cani\u00e7al was a whaling station until 1981. The Museu da Baleia now tells that rupture as a conservation story.<\/p>\n
The core of the region is Ponta de S\u00e3o Louren\u00e7o, the narrow headland at the eastern end. The waymarked PR8 runs about 8 kilometres there and back, takes roughly three hours and offers not a single patch of shade. Wind and sun are stronger here than anywhere else on the island; two litres of water and a hat are not overkill.<\/p>\n
Weather rule: when the north and the centre are shut in, the east is often the only clear spot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Machico, Cani\u00e7al, Ponta de S\u00e3o Louren\u00e7o: 30 minutes from Funchal, the driest corner of the island and its only treeless hike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":73,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[26,27],"class_list":["post-19","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hiking-levadas","tag-machico","tag-santa-cruz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}