‘Hawaii of Europe’: how Madeira’s lush hiking trails offer scenery worthy of a movie set

On my right, Jurassic fern fronds and violet morning glories cascade over a cliff on crystalline water, smashing into the craggy shore hundreds of feet below. To my left, lime-green succulents cling to a wall of volcanic rock. “You can see why Portuguese call this ‘the Garden in the Ocean’,” says Silvia Mota, a guide for tour operator Backroads’ new walking and hiking trip in Madeira, Portugal. This lush, 286 square mile (740 sq km) island – almost three times the size of Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of the US state of Massachusetts that is famous for its pristine beaches – has inspired a lot of nicknames. It has been dubbed the Pearl of the Atlantic, a nod to the ocean that surrounds it, while its reputation for comfortable year-round temperatures has spawned another dreamy moniker: the Island of Eternal Spring. The word madeira means “wood” in Portuguese. That is what explorers found when they discovered this densely forested, uninhabited island in the 15th century. Six hundred years later, it is tourists who are discovering this so-called Hawaii of Europe. The island of roughly 260,000 residents welcomed a record-breaking 2.2 million overnight visitors in 2024. Today, visitors fly into Madeira’s Cristiano Ronaldo International Airport – the primary airport for the Madeira archipelago – which was named after the football superstar who hails from the island’s capital city of Funchal. Backroads has added Madeira to its extensive portfolio of trips this year. From March through December, it offers six-day guided itineraries that take small groups on adventures spanning the coast to the clouds. Actually, above the clouds. One trek along a portion of the island’s most famous hike – Stairway to Heaven – had us hovering around 6,000 feet (1,800 metres) above sea level, peering down at what looked like a fluffy, white duvet tucked between jagged peaks. Most of this trail remains closed after a 2024 wildfire, but the open portion does not disappoint with its panoramic views. Hiking is a huge draw to this natural playground, home to the planet’s largest surviving expanse of laurel forest, which was inscribed as a Unesco World Heritage site in 1999. This prehistoric type of subtropical vegetation once covered much of southern Europe and North Africa but largely disappeared after the last Ice Age. An estimated 20 per cent of Madeira is still covered by this evergreen-rich, biodiverse ecosystem. Our group of nine headed to São Vicente on the north side of the island, where the laurel forest is more concentrated. We wandered through nearly five miles of movie-set-worthy scenery: a tableau of mossy waterfalls, ancient laurel trees and flowering plants. Mota handed out headlamps for us to wear in the dark tunnels that are so prevalent on this mountainous island. Another highlight of hiking in Madeira is that many footpaths follow a network of irrigation canals called levadas. These narrow channels were built to funnel much-needed water from the northern highlands to the towns and farms in the dry south. The levadas’ origins date back to the 15th century, but this engineering feat is still used today to distribute water – and to guide hikers through the island’s diverse terrain. Walking next to these slow-moving aqueducts added a calming, peaceful vibe to our hikes, which we typically did in the morning, followed by another trek in the afternoon. In between, we would stop at a local restaurant or winery for a hearty lunch of fried cornmeal cubes, skewers of beef, fresh-caught tuna and tender scabbardfish. Seafood was sometimes topped with bananas, which are especially good when grown in Madeira. “They’re smaller and sweeter,” said Mota as she treated us to a post-hike snack of her home-made banana bread. We washed it down with cups of poncha, a citrusy cocktail made with sugar cane juice. We walked next to hanging clusters of “bananas de Madeira” growing at Faja dos Padres, an organic farm on the coast. It is only accessible by boat or with a cable car ride down the sheer rock face of a mountain. The cable car dropped us off for a farm tour, lunch and a refreshing dip in the ocean. Even though it is billed as a hiking trip, our itinerary had time for us to be in and on the water. We took two rides on inflatable Zodiac boats, including a “sea safari” that had us travelling with a playful pod of Atlantic spotted dolphins, their babies in tow. Two of the three hotels we stayed in fronted the ocean – and they all had inviting pools – making it easy to go for a swim. When it came time to fly home, I peered out the plane’s window for a bird’s-eye view of the island. The terra-cotta-tiled roofs slowly disappeared. Soon, all I could see was a blanket of green surrounded by chalk-white clouds and cobalt blue water – Madeira, a garden in the ocean. Lori Rackl

‘Hawaii of Europe’: how Madeira’s lush hiking trails offer scenery worthy of a movie set

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Hiking is a huge draw to Madeira, where Earth’s largest surviving expanse of laurel forest is inscribed as a Unesco World Heritage site

Hiking is a huge draw to Madeira, where Earth’s largest surviving expanse of laurel forest is inscribed as a Unesco World Heritage site