Wow, I loved the engagement in my last part 1 post of this hike series. Always cool to know that people actually read the text I spend my time writing, thank you!
Time for part two where we finally, after a hard hike, made our way to the top of the highest mountain of Madeira, Pico Ruivo. If you haven't seen it, then you can find the first post here.
We were about 5.5 kilometers into the hike and it was hot as hell in the sunshine during the climb upwards. I thought about spraying my shirt with water to cool myself down but I realized that this might not be the brightest of ideas. When in the shade then it gets chilly again. After all, I should not be wasting drinking water either.
We finally reached to a checkpoint, just under the highest peak, and the final push to the highest point of Madeira. There was a building, a small cafe it looked like.
Quite a huge amount of people chilling there. We also decided to make a longer break and rest our legs a bit. We were able to replenish our water supply and use a toilet. Inside there was a small cafe where we used to buy ice cream, a couple of cookies and a soda.
I asked the cashier in the cafe, how do they come up here to work every day? He said: we hike, with a smile. I couldn't tell if it was irony or do they really hike there every freakin day. I mean there are no roads for vehicles to get up there. I find it also impossible to do this hike every day. The only logical way I see them doing this if they are making week-long shifts or something and sleeping on the location. Hike up and back once a week or something.
After taking about a 30-minute pause of hiking, it was time to conquer the top. If I remember correctly, it was less than one kilometer to go but the path was steep.
My pulse on my watch showed me 163bpm max at some point, I did feel it pounding hard.
Not long after, we were up! At the top of the island Madeira, on the highest peak Pico Ruivo at 1861 meters of altitude.
The views obviously were gorgeous. From up there, you can see almost all of the island that is not obstructed by other mountains. You can also see the ocean on every side, far down below. Here are some of the shots I took at the top.
One thing I also will remember is not so pleasant. Near the top was about a 5-meter vertical cliff, while taking photos there I noticed a trail of human shit on the cliff wall and toilet papers. Someone had literally tried to take shit down the cliff. It was fucking disgusting. Like, I know diarrhea doesn't always call long before the burst but god damn. There were many bushes all around and the least go under one of these, not on the place where everyone come to admire the sights.
Besides the pile of human feces, it was an amazing place and got these really dope photos.
Hello, me here.
Seems to be a village far down below in the valley.
I am pretty positive that the mountain in the photo down below is a historic eruption crater, millions of years old. I can recognize one when I see it. Probably a splatter cone that has erupted many times in the past.
I think in total we spent about 30 minutes up there, admiring the sights. Took a couple of final photos before we started heading back.
Overall, I'm not really a fan of these photos in the post you see here. Yes, the landscapes are gorgeous on these shots and all but the lighting is ugly and can't really make it much better in post-processing. Mid-day light just isn't good in this case.
Now we had all this way we came up here to go back to where we started the hike. Climbing all those thousands of stairs again.
The weather took a drastic change at some point during the hike back but that created many different conditions and therefore some really interesting photo opportunities, got a couple of spectacular photos that I love. Will show you all of these in the final part 3. As always, stay tuned!
Thought about deleting the human shit part in this post to not ruin the reading experience but eh, let it be 😀
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