Following the timelapses I posted here last week, I will also upload a small selection of photos I made of the beautiful island Madeira in 2015.

First image was a difficult choice since I made many beautiful shots of the surfers riding the big waves on the south-west side of the island at Jardim do Mar. Definitely no swimming (for me anyways) there, but instead awesome big blue back-lit waves with surfers riding the barrels!

The next image is of a beautiful natural arch at the north coast at Seixal. Also no swimming here and I must admit it was somewhat frightening to see the big aggressive waves explode on the rocks at about 2 meters of my camera. I sat with my back against the wall, so fingers crossed there was not going to be a wave just a little bit bigger… 😉

After these wild ocean views I decided to look at it from a more panoramic and scenic point of view. Madeira is off course known for the beautiful hiking trails along its steep coasts and following the Levada’s (water channels) you come along many fantastic views like this…

Although it is just an small island, Madeira has some serieus en steep elevation. Next image was taken at the Buzzard’s Nest, or Ninho da Manta, at Pico do Arieiro (the dome in the background) at an elevation of 1810 m. Easy to reach by car, very good hiking trails and awesome views!

Another beautiful natural feature of Madeira is the Laurel (or Laurisilva) forest. An evergreen subtropical forest with beautiful mossy trees and often a spooky misty atmosphere. Be there at the right time of day and you’ll experience a sort of enchanted forest…

When posting images of Madeira, you can’t forget to include some views from the beautiful eastern side of the island. Here you can find the 9 km long peninsula Ponta de Sao Lourenco’s Natural Reserve. Although it can be windy, it offers a nice hike and beautiful views of the island, as seen here from Ponta do Rosto.

After this nice sunset I went back another day to the eastern peninsula to shoot the sunrise on the other site. Because I knew I had to hike quite a bit, I drove their early and arrived in total darkness. A while ago I already uploaded a panorama of the hill I had to climb under the stars. Next image is taken at about the same place, the parking lot, from where I started my hike to see the sunrise later on. So here we have a part of the milky-way and a palm tree, with Andromeda next to the palm in the lower center part. And of course some light pollution from the city on the left 😉

After that introduction the next image has to be of the sunrise at Ponta de Sao Lourenco of course. So after about 30 minutes hiking in the dark due to broken and missing flashlights, I arrived at the top of the small hill, but also on top the steep cliffs on the other side, which was a nice surprise when I started to see a bit more later on. I stayed on top for a while and took lots of photos of the sunrise, but in the end I like this panorama the best, taken just before sunrise…

 

As I said before there’re a lot of hiking possibilities on Madeira. Next hike we undertook was about 5kms to the ’25 Fontes’ waterfalls all along the Levada’s. At the time we visited the falls, there wasn’t much water to fall, but still it was very nice to see with the small streams and colorful rocks. Compared to i.e. Ponta de Sao Lourenco national park, this was a very green and wet walk through the hills in the higher parts of central Madeira. Nice fresh air and, off course, beautiful views.

 

Let’s go out with a bang with this somewhat over the top image which I created out of the 907 exposures of the timelapse of the sunrise at our hotel in Funchal over a period of about 4 hours. Some people like it, some do not, but it is one of my favorite styles and projects I like to do 🙂 Thanks for reading!