Madalena

The sun was shining so after getting ourselves set up in Joe’s Place, we went for a drive to a nearby cave in the country. The owner gave us a headlamp and told us about the unusual gold and silver colours in the cave that we were going to see.

I think that most people would zoom by the entrance to these caves and never even notice them. But for the curious, there's 45 minutes of discovery to be had in these hidden caves.

We drove and parked the car at a cattle gate and saw in the near distance three unassuming hills. We walked gingerly through mud, deep cow prints and cow patties to one of the hills and hidden at the back of the hill was a big hole in the ground leading to a cave. It was pretty wet but we scrambled down the rocks and entered a fantasy world. Fun stuff!

Our BnB host was right. The inside of the cave glowed especially when we shone the light on the ceiling of it. I have been calling the area a cave but it is actually a lava tunnel.

This cave is named after a hermit, Frei Mathias (Brother Mathias), who lived in this cave in fear of pirates. We read that the cave is 1,000 m long, but most of the cave is difficult to explore as you have to crawl on your stomach. Caving equipment and experience is necessary, so we didn’t go in too deep. What we saw though was very neat and we loved exploring the area that we could get into.

From the cave we went on a road trip through the centre of the island past the volcano but the clouds hid her! The winds were pretty ferocious so we were afraid to open the car doors when we got out to take some photos of the interior landscape.

Heading north, we visited the quaint town of Sao Roque (1,500 people) that was full of beautiful spots - a lovely municipal garden, rock pools in the ocean, a windmill and another whale industry museum. We chose to sit in the sun on the lava seawall and watch the waves before heading back to Madalena.Read more