Madeira Road Trip: Funchal, Porto Moniz and the North Coast (3 Days)

Madeira is 113 kilometres around and takes three days, which sounds absurd until you drive it. The island is a mountain that came out of the Atlantic and never flattened out, so the road is tunnels, hairpins and gradients that a flat map cannot show — and the best twenty kilometres on it are a road that was replaced and left standing.

Day 1 — Funchal west along the south coast (32 km)

Out of Funchal through Câmara de Lobos, a working fishing harbour that has resisted becoming a postcard, and up to Cabo Girão — one of the highest sea cliffs in Europe, with a glass platform hanging off the edge for anyone who wants to look straight down.

Then Ribeira Brava, where a valley cuts inland, and along to Calheta. This coast is banana terraces and villages wedged into ravines, and the expressway tunnels past most of it — so take the old road where you can.

Day 2 — Around the west end to Porto Moniz (32 km)

The quiet corner. Ponta do Pargo has the lighthouse at the island’s western tip and almost no one at it. At Achadas da Cruz a cable car drops down a near-vertical cliff to a farming terrace at sea level that has no road at all.

Porto Moniz is the night: natural pools formed in the lava where the Atlantic breaks over the rim and refills them.

Day 3 — The old coast road back to Funchal (49 km)

The drive people remember. Between Porto Moniz and São Vicente the modern VE2 goes through the rock in tunnels — and the old ER101, the narrow ledge it replaced, is still there, cut into the cliff face with the sea below it.

Near Seixal a waterfall falls directly onto the old carriageway. You drive under it. It is the most photographed road on the island and it earns that.

Then inland over the Encumeada pass and down to Funchal, with the island’s spine in cloud above you.

No tolls, none, anywhere

Madeira’s whole road network — the VE and VR expressways, every tunnel, the regional ER roads — is toll-free.

That is worth stating plainly because mainland Portugal is not: the A22 and the Douro roads run electronic pórtico tolls that bill a number plate with no booth to stop at, and a driver who has read about those is right to expect the same here. The island charges nothing.

Rent something small

The car that works here is a small hatchback with a working handbrake, not a comfortable one. Gradients are steep enough that underpowered automatics struggle, village lanes were laid out before cars, and the parking in Funchal and Porto Moniz is tight.

What it costs

Use the cost calculator to price fuel and nights for your exact dates. With no tolls on the island, the only fixed costs are fuel, parking, and the cable car at Achadas da Cruz if you take it.