Levadas are water courses running round the mountains and were built by the first settlers to carry water to inaccessible farmland. Today they are one of Madeira’s greatest tourist attractions.


Madeira has a fantastic network of trails and levadas. There are more than 200 levadas crisscrossing the island’s basalt rock masses, taking hikers into a rare natural world.
Along these irrigation channels you will come across species of fauna and flora found hardly anywhere else in the world, in Madeira’s traditional Laurissilva Forest, which has been declared a World Natural Heritage Site.
You can see birds like the long-toed pigeon (Columba trocaz), Zino’s petrel (Pterodroma madeira), Madeiran chaffinch (Fringila coelebs maderensis) and Madeiran firecrest (Regulus ignicapillus maderensis) and trees like the stinklaurel (Ocotea foetens), laurel (Laurus azorica) or Madeira mahogany (Persea indica), along with a variety of other unique shrubs, plants and mosses.
Most of the routes are accessible, though there are varying degrees of difficulty. We recommend that you buy programmes organised by travel agencies or holiday activity companies, as the walks they organise use the proper equipment and are accompanied by professional mountain guides.

Never try these walks alone.

in www.madeiratourism.org

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