depth (Teleférico do Funchal)

We had as chilled a holiday in Madeira as we could manage, which meant very little hillwalking even though our apartment was on a hill (taxis are excellent things). But since Madeira is volcanic there's a lot of mountain to be seen, and in Funchal there's a cable car to take you 500 or so metres up to Monte and see things from a different perspective.

Lower down the mountain at the beginning of the ride, the houses look very similar to each other. There's very little variation in colour and shape, though the placement of the buildings themselves isn't uniform, and from this perspective it looks as though it remains that way however high up and far away they go.

But from further up, and tucked into the hidden valleys, it's a different story. There are fewer houses, but they're bright pink and light blue and perched right on the edge of a cliff and full of people hanging out their washing, completely unbothered by the hundred or so cars flying over their heads every hour. Occasional large chunks of the uniform white houses conceal the maverick colours from a distance, so if you're not looking directly at it, you'd never know it was there. This appeals to me immensely, even though I am extraordinarily lazy person who would definitely cry if made to live anywhere so steep for any length of time. 

Hills just do not bother people in Funchal. Not the tiniest bit. We walked past an old man practically skipping up a hill as we were getting winded walking down it. You can see why. 

When we got to the top and got off out, we discovered the botanical gardens tickets we had weren't for the garden next to the teleférico, but for a second cable car ride to a garden a bit further away. This other garden really didn't do much for us (it wasn't very pretty and it was on a hill, so we came away grumpy and exhausted), but the view from the second cable car was something else. 

I took this one because it reminded me of a drawing I did over and over as a kid. I've always been utterly terrible at drawing but still wanted to do it, so I drew the same picture of masses of overlapping hills stretching off into the distance on an almost weekly basis. I mean, it didn't look like this, it was literally just a bunch of curved lines drawn in green felt tip with maybe a blue river somewhere if I was feeling fancy, but I saw this and it made me nostalgic. 

This is the only non-cable car picture in the post, and I took it from the botanical gardens in Monte, at the end of cable car number two. I don't think this one is especially great from a photography standpoint, but I wanted to include it because it played tricks on my mind when I was editing it. My eye went to the empty expanse at the lower right of the frame first, and I wondered why I'd just taken a picture of some rock... then I noticed the houses and hills in the middle of the frame, and then I noticed that the rock was actually next to a motorway, and was mildly surprised. The fact that I managed to confuse myself makes it worthy of inclusion, because I get to decide these things. 

Back on the cable car the other way, taking pictures through the window behind me. I really like how the cable lines work here - wide at the very top of the picture and coming to a point two-thirds of the way down, drawing attention to the depth of the valley. 

I'm glad I got a photo like this, because I wasn't sure I was going to be able to. I took a few of these, looked at them on my viewing screen, decided everything looked totally flat and the exact opposite of what I was going for, and stopped taking these pictures in favour of zoomed-in close-ups. I need to stop doing this, because I always hate the zoomed-in close-ups. 

These are probably the last Madeira scenery pictures I'll do, which means I need to find something else to photograph. I've no idea just yet what that will be - I'll see what comes my way.