On my right, Jurassic fern fronds and violet morning glories cascade over a cliff on crystalline water, smashing into the craggy shore hundreds of feet below. To my left, lime-green succulents cling to a wall of volcanic rock.
“You can see why Portuguese call this ‘the Garden in the Ocean’,” says Silvia Mota, a guide for tour operator Backroads’ new walking and hiking trip in Madeira, Portugal.
This lush, 286 square mile (740 sq km) island – almost three times the size of Martha’s Vineyard, an island off the coast of the US state of Massachusetts that is famous for its pristine beaches – has inspired a lot of nicknames.
It has been dubbed the Pearl of the Atlantic, a nod to the ocean that surrounds it, while its reputation for comfortable year-round temperatures has spawned another dreamy moniker: the Island of Eternal Spring.
The word madeira means “wood” in Portuguese. That is what explorers found when they discovered this densely forested, uninhabited island in the 15th century.
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