Day 2 - Fanal Forest, Madeira

No doubt you read my earlier blog post about day 1 in Madeira? (linked here if by some twist of circumstance you missed it!)

Even though we'd had a pretty solid few hours of fog at Fanal the previous day, we were still keen to get back at it again, and this time we would be joined by Neil Burnell, who we'd found out was on a separate holiday at the same time. 5 strapping hulks, plus camera gear in a Ford Fiesta on the steep Madeiran roads was quite the journey, but, as we exited the car like circus clowns, we were delighted to once again see (or not see) thick fog.

I will confess that I struggled a bit on day 2 - the combination of travel, late nights/early mornings plus the walking we'd already done left me feeling a bit jaded, and I think that reflected in my photography, which was all a bit half arsed. Fanal Forest was also ridiculously busy, which would have been fine, however lots of people were climbing all over the trees, and that kind of put me in a state of self righteous pomposity. Rather than rove and explore, I defaulted to some of the easier shots, or lacked patience for people to move out of the way, and for that I'm a bit disappointed in myself.

We hung around until lunch and at that point hunger struck and Dave went Diva, so we popped in to the nearby Rainforest cafe for some food. I would definitely recommend checking this place out if you visit Fanal. It was certainly not what I was expecting from the outside, tacky in the very best way, with over the top decor and robot waiters! Food was good too..

Once dinner was done we headed to the apartment, stopping at a couple of scenic laybys on the way..

Epic views after a wrong turn on the way home from Fanal

As I was the driver, I kind of decided that for the afternoon/evening we should shoot somewhere else to get a feel for the island, and it looked like that might have been a good decision until the road to the destination I had in mind turned out to be closed. Reluctantly (at the time), I agreed to head back to Fanal, which was still very very foggy. Due to my pouty face, we discussed exploring a different part of the location, and ended up finding some compositions that got us all feeling very excited, and me a bit sheepish for being a grumpy arse. Arriving late, we only had about 40 minutes of light so we did what we could, but planned to return on day 3, once we had visited Pico De Arierio, which was our sunrise location (at my insistence - diva is as diva does!)

I'll write about day 3 in my third blog, along with some thoughts and musings from the trip (which had gone way better than I could have hoped to this point!)

Schwing