Finally our day has arrived for the hike out to Ponta de Sao Lourenco, and a beautiful day it is.  After doing a quick check on Waze to be sure the road looked open, we headed out early hoping to beat some of the crowd.  We indeed found a parking spot close to the trailhead and felt we had already succeeded.  The trail said, "not so fast".

Ponta de Sao Lourenco is said to be one of the last untouched places on Madeira, and it certainly appears to be so.  It is largely a nature reserve, and is home to very different vegetation and wildlife than the rest of the island as well as interesting rock formations.  Not that we saw much wildlife, as there were enough people on the trail to discourage that even this early.  The views however were spectacular.  It is a 4.6-mile walk out and back, with a lot of ups and downs.  The trail surface is well developed and made for easy walking, if a little slow on the uphills.  We saw a bit of remaining filming equipment at the trailhead parking area when we started, but otherwise no sign of wookies or acolytes.  We had our picnic lunch after "summiting" back down at the only outpost of commercialization, the Casa do Sardinha.  It didn't have much to offer but we only needed a cold Coke and the WC (which cost a whole euro to use but we didn't begrudge them for it as this is a pretty tough location to service). 

As we walked back, we began to pass many more hikers including some large tour groups, which made us happy we arrived so early.  And then, when we reached the parking lot, we found an ice cream truck where we had to indulge as it was nearly 1 p.m. and it had gotten rather warm.  We didn't envy the crowd of hikers just starting out.  As we drove away, we saw the line of cars overflow-parking along the road extended about 8/10 of a mile downhill, making latecomers' hike even longer.  Again, glad for that early wake-up alarm.

Also a benefit of our early arrival . . . an early return home to do our final load of wash (the hiking clothes!) and packing for our departure to England tomorrow.  We were cleaning out our remaining food supplies, so eating in, but Craig graciously went out for a bottle of chilled vinho verde to help Phyllis through the packing process.  It is getting harder to pack for a flight, what with the three large bottles of alcohol we have to safely and snugly nestle in the already rather full suitcases.   However, it went pretty smoothly and we were in bed well before midnight.