| Ponta de Sao Lourenco Pico do Furado Ponta de Sao Lourenco-190 |
| Estimated net time | 3-4 hours | ||
| Difficulty | No technical difficulties, and where there's a touch of exposure there are fences. | ||
| Drinking water | No stable access to running water. | ||
| GSM coverage | Coverage throughout the route (November 2014). | ||
| Parking | Room for many cars at trail head car park. | ||
| Start height | 60 metres | ||
| Vertical metres | 700 metres for the roundtrip. | ||
| Trip distance | 9.0 km | ||
| GPS-file | X | ||
| Map |
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| Route photo |
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From Madeira's capital Funchal drive east along the south coast, on road VR1, towards Machico. When the road to Machico exits right a little after the airport continue towards Canical. Then turn right towards Lourenco and drive 4.8 km to the end of the road. Find parking at the car park along the left hand side of the road, preferably as close to the end of the road as possible.
From the small round about at the end of the road walk downhill on the man made path and follow this path north and east all the way to Pico do Furado (170m), located above the small restaurant Casa do Sardinha. There are three tops worth visiting along the path before you get to this top, and you can either visit them while heading out, or on your way back, or a combination. These three tops are, in order from west to east:
- Top 178m (PF 69m), which has a concrete cairn at its summit.
- Top 190m (PF 149m), which is the highest point on the peninsula.
- Top 153m (PF 86m), where the eastern top is approximately 1m higher then the more pointy western top.
From Pico do Furado head back to the car park, following the lower route west of Casa do Sardinha if you came across top 153m on your outward hike, assuming you don't visit the tops again if you already visited them while heading out.
Our first day at Madeira, having arrived from Norway late evening the day before. Given the wet and grey weather we decided to start our hiking by doing the low coastal route on the first day, driving all the way out to the peninsula sticking out on the east side of Madeira.
It was pouring down when we parked the car so we waited in the car for a few minutes, but we hadn't come to Madeira to sit inside a car at a car park so put on our water proofs and started the walk towards the fascinating volcanic landscape of Ponta de Sao Lourenco. And we were not the only ones; this was very much tourist territory and a very busy place even on this grey day.
As we made our way east the weather soon improved and we could stuff the water proofs into our back packs, and visibility also improved and gave us a good overview of the many small tops and sea pinnacles, as well as a view towards the Desertas Islands towards south-east.
On our way back from Pico do Furado I did two de-tours to the remaining two tops that we didn't visit on our outwards hike, and throughout the hike I made sure I logged the altitude of all tops and saddles because the maps I had found for Madeira were very inaccurate and not suitable to identify exact primary factors of the many tops.
