Cabo Girão

Overview

Cabo Girão is the sea cliff west of Funchal that drops 580 m straight into the Atlantic, one of the highest in Europe, with a glass-floored skywalk cantilevered over the edge since 2012 and up to 1,800 visitors a day looking down through their feet at the terraced fields on the shore platform below and the fishing boats of Câmara de Lobos to the east. It is free, open at all hours, 2 km from Câmara de Lobos, and the viewing takes ten minutes; the cliff walks that start here take longer.

The Fajãs de Cabo Girão at the foot of the cliff are cultivated plots on wave-cut platforms that were reached only by boat until a cable car was built down the cliff face in 2003 for the farmers; it runs for visitors too, and is the other way to see the wall.

Visiting

The road from Câmara de Lobos climbs to a car park and a café by the chapel; the skywalk is a short walk on, a glass platform with a railing straight over the drop, with Câmara de Lobos, the bay of Funchal and the Desertas islands to the east and the coast west to Ribeira Brava. The farmers’ cable car station is beside the viewpoint and takes a few minutes down to the fajã, where paths run between the vines and vegetable plots at the foot of the wall.

The cape is a starting point for walks: the levada do Norte contours the hillside above Câmara de Lobos and Estreito, and the coast path runs west through the villages of the south shore.

History

The cliff is a diamond-shaped escarpment of the island’s volcanic layers between two river valleys, running 3 km from the edge of Câmara de Lobos to the Quinta Grande valley, rising from 560 to 589 m; the builders of Funchal’s cathedral quarried its trachyte and basalt for the church in the 1490s. A chapel to Our Lady of Fátima was built on the cape in 1974, replacing a smaller one of 1931; the skywalk, modelled on the Grand Canyon’s, opened in late October 2012.

Tips

• Cloud sits on the cliff top in the afternoon on many days; morning is clearer, and the light is on the eastern face.
• The skywalk is glass; people who dislike heights can see everything from the paved terrace beside it.
• Buses from Funchal on the west-coast routes pass the turn-off; the walk up from Câmara de Lobos takes 40 minutes and is steep.
• Câmara de Lobos, the fishing village Churchill painted, has the poncha bars and the lunch; the cape has only the café.

Nearby

• Câmara de Lobos: 2 km east.
• Funchal: 12 km east.
• Ribeira Brava: 10 km west.
• Curral das Freiras, the nuns’ valley: 15 km inland.