April 17. Good weather at the hotel, but we went up to the mountain plateau Paúl da Serra. Here it was misty and only 6 degrees (Celcius). We parked below the Senhor da Montanha monument where Jesus appeared throught the mist.
He is 6 tons heavy and made of white marble.
There are more religious symbols below his knoll. Here are the loaves of bread and the fish, also made of white marble. But isn’t there one loaf too many?
Levada do Paúl crosses the road a couple of hundred meters below the monument. It runs 1300 meters above the sea and gathers water from the great plateau Paúl da Serra. This high nature seems barren, the reason being centuries of misuse of the forests (I wrote something about the reforestation project here). There was also a fire here some years ago. The yellow bushes are furze, beautiful but fierce with thousands of hard, long and sharp thorns.
We were not the only wanderers on the levada path.
Here is an ancient stone paved road crossing the levada.
Some way after the road crossing you can walk a short path up onto a mountain top with a stunning wiew of the great valley. If you turn around you can admire this magnificent mountain wall.
Shortly afterwards it started to rain and we turned back to the car. On our way back home over the plateau we had a break at the bizarre bar/restaurant/hotel Jungle Rain Cafe.
The interior is supposed to make you feel like being in the jungle.
It is an internet cafe too. However, Gunilla didn’t manage to send her mail. Bad communication due to the rain, the waiter said. The fake tree is asleep at the moment.
Even the chairs have tails.
When we got back to the hotel, ants had created their own walking trail on the kitchen wall. What now?
Well, they had found a package of yummy crackers. I hope they enjoyed them to the full, because shortly the cleaning maiden entered with her largest spray bottle and spoiled the fun.
