{"id":719,"date":"2017-10-21T12:04:33","date_gmt":"2017-10-21T12:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/?p=719"},"modified":"2017-10-21T12:23:28","modified_gmt":"2017-10-21T12:23:28","slug":"madeira-wie-man-die-langeweile-ueberwindet-und-neue-freunde-findet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/madeira-wie-man-die-langeweile-ueberwindet-und-neue-freunde-findet","title":{"rendered":"Madeira – How to overcome boredom and make new friends"},"content":{"rendered":"

Our first days in Funchal were nice, but as you’ve probably read between the lines, not very exciting. The problem is our preferred way of travelling. We like to do things. Chilling all day long is frustrating for us after a short while. To walk around the same places everyday is not great for us. Madeira also doesn’t have huge beaches since the whole island consists of volcanic rock.\u00a0Therefore long beach walks aren’t in\u00a0the cards either.<\/p>\n

Therefore Funchal has not made it to our number one city for us.\u00a0But it did\u00a0surprise us\u00a0with the one thing that we really want for our world tour starting next year.<\/p>\n

But let’s start from the beginning:<\/p>\n

To get a little bit more action into our vacation, we decided on some activities for the next couple of days. This included a Levada(water-supply river)-trek, canyoning and exploring the island with\u00a0local busses.<\/p>\n

As Levada treks are a little dangerous due to unsecured paths and it is not so easy to get to a starting point without a car, we decided on a guided trek. We were lucky, since our group consisted of only four people, since four others have cancelled. Even eight people is not much for such a trek. We walked the “25 Fontes and Cascada da Risco”\u00a0where you can see the huge Risco waterfall (yes the picture makes it look sort of small, but you get the point):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

and the 25 fountains.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

12 kilometers was the trek and really pretty. We even walked one kilometer through this unbelievably dark tunnel.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

After that we drank some traditional Poncha, a drink with fresh oranges and lemons, rum and honey. Very yummy and is supposed to be great for colds (which I had at the time).<\/p>\n

As we got back home we still has some time. We went for Dinner and went back to the hotel. At 9 we were already ready to go to sleep. Then we remembered, that we didn’t have enough money for the canyoning the next day, so we unfortunately needed to get back out of bed and go to the bank, On our way back we came by a bar and thought: Why not. We were up now anyway, so why not get a beer.<\/p>\n

So we drank a beer in this empty bar. When we were almost ready to go, two men came in, one who had a guitar with him. I told Bj\u00f6rn that if they start playing now we can’t go yet.<\/p>\n

And they did, at their table in the empty bar, songs in portuguese. The man told me his friend just got a new guitar and they wanted to try it out. They were both musicians. After every song we were applauding and\u00a0some more\u00a0people came into the bar. At some point they stopped playing and I asked if they would play some more. The man said: Sure, later I’ll play some more for you.<\/p>\n

And he did, he sat next to Bj\u00f6rn, told\u00a0us their names\u00a0are Mario and Carlos,\u00a0got his own guitar out of his car and played for us.\"\"<\/p>\n

After a couple of songs we took a picture together and that could’ve been the end of the story.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But it wasn’t. Mario asked us if we wanted to come to a concert he will give tomorrow in a hotel not far from us. We said yes and the next day we were almost on time for the concert. To our surprise this was a very classy hotel where every table was already occupied. The whole garden was full of people.<\/p>\n

Lucky for us, Mario asked the waiter to get a table for us and we got a nice seat on the sides. Until Mario called the waiter again and he took our table and placed it directly in front of the stage. You should’ve seen how the other guests stared daggers at us \ud83d\ude00 Two people in metal shirts and short pants, sweaty from a whole day of walking,\u00a0suddenly for whatever reason get VIP seats in the first row. What a blast \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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After the performance Mario unfortunately could only stay for one\u00a0espresso and then had to drive home the singer.<\/p>\n

He said we could meet up again if we find some time.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, we came home late each of the following nights.<\/p>\n

That could’ve been the end of the story. But it wasn’t \ud83d\ude00<\/p>\n

On our last night, we came back to Funchal at about 8 and wanted to gram something to eat and maybe drink some wine in our hotel.<\/p>\n

On our way to the restaurant, we passed by\u00a0another\u00a0restaurant and\u00a0I heard some familiar music. I glanced over the handrail… and saw Mario. He probably thought we were stalkers but we went down and talked a little bit with him between performances. Before we left we arranged that we would meet again in the bar where we first met.<\/p>\n

After we found the Bar again, we drank a few drinks and Mario and Carlos a few Espressos\u00a0and told each other some stories. We had such a great time and they are so friendly and interesting people. The Universe always has a way of bringing people together.<\/p>\n

This is exactly what we wish for, when we go on our world tour. Meet real people and new friends. Of course it is also nice meeting tourists and other backpackers, but meeting someone who lives there and find out what their lives are like is just awesome.<\/p>\n

The next article from Madeira\u00a0will be how we got really close to lizards and screamed “Good morning!” in 7 degrees Celsius cold water \ud83d\ude09 So stay tuned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Our first days in Funchal were nice, but as you’ve probably read between the lines, not very exciting. The problem is our preferred way of travelling. We like to do things. Chilling all day long is frustrating for us after Read more…<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":783,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,74,7,1],"tags":[86,77,83,82,78,58,68,84,81,76,67,40,79,80,52,85,9],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.0","language":"en","enabled_languages":["de","en"],"languages":{"de":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false}}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/cropped-IMG_1768-Large.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":790,"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719\/revisions\/790"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/world-unlimited.de\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}