KML: From Moinhos up on the Eagle Rock (Penha d' Aguia)

Length:	3,38 Km
Alt. Lowest:	58 m
Alt. Highest:	558 m
Max. Ascent:	70,7%
Avg. Ascent:	25,9%

This is a hiking trail, which I, after a gone-wrong ascent to the Penha d' Aguia, composed out of several route decriptions and publicly available KMLs from the Internet. The trail goes from Moinhos (easily accessible by car or bus) on the easiest way up to the Penha d' Aguia. I never hiked that route myself, so I take no reponsibility for the correctness of the route, but I can assure you, that I have done my best.

Links:

• Download the KML ->

ATTENTION: BEFORE USING THE KMLs, PLEASE READ THE TERMS OF USE FOR ALIONLIVE KML'S!

New Video: Fancy a one-hour bus ride from Faial to Monte?

Yes, it's that time again: We ride the bus! And this time it is somewhat brutal. The quality of the road unfortunately caused even more shaky camera than usual. In addition, someone grabbed the seat at the front of the bus. To get a picture filling motif, I had to zoom a bit and that increased the shaky-cam-factor even more. As bad as this may read: I think it is bearable. And it is worth watching because of the following:

The Plot
Somehow the bus was going on a special route. So we drive for the first 20 minutes crisscross through Faial and the surrounding areas, and get to see beautiful views of the Eagle Rock and the surrounding landscape. Not your everyday  bus ride. After the special route it goes directly to Monte. Here we see a nice mixture of the possible weather conditions in Madeira. We start in Faial in slightly cloudy but sunny weather. The route takes us through Cruzinhas to Ribeiro Frio. Between Ribeiro Frio and Poiso we break through the clouds and it is adorably foggy. Shortly after Poiso we end up above the clouds and the sun makes one almost blind. And so it goes on, via the Parque Ecologico do Funchal until shortly before Terreiro da Luta, where we again take a dip in the clouds, until finally, just before Monte, we get a beautiful view of Funchal. On reaching the town sign of Monte, I stopped filming, because we already filmed the bus ride from Monte to Funchal in 2011. In addition, my wrist started to hurt from holding the camera aboard the shaky bus. This was also caused by a slight overuse of the wrist on the bus ride the day before. This is also the last bus ride video of this series.

The Soundtrack
One or the other asked to hear more from the unusual alionsonny album "Electronic Spacerock". And because the music fits great for bus rides, the soundtrack consists of almost the entire album. Almost only because there was simply no time for the last track. The soundtrack in detail:

• 00:00 80s 4 Ever
• 05:08 Never Born To Follow
• 10:11 Rise & Shine
• 15:01 Aurora Borealis
• 19:45 Sunrise
• 24:51 Days of Our Years
• 29:33 Fear No Evil
• 34:42 Gettin 'Old
• 39:11 Spacejourney Chapter Two
• 43:41 Forest
• 49:11 Flowers
• 54:30 Fire Dance

Of course, the album is also available in all well sorted online stores. Get it for YOUR bus ride in Madeira! Some of the links can be found on the homepage of the album on alionsonny.com.

What's next?

Next time we hike again. And what a hike this will be! I never did a hike like this one during all the times I've been in Madeira. It starts in Faial, from we hike to the hydroelectric power station, continue up the hill to the Pico Ruivo tunnel and through the tunnel below the Pico Ruivo to the Caldeirao do Inferno. Then we hike back via the Caldeirao Verde to Queimadas. Those of you who know Madeira, wil find it hard to believe that we managed to get all this done in one day. The sheer volume of video footage and photos taken during the hike forces me to divide this day in not less than 3 parts. But that's a story for another day. Now have a nice bus ride, and, as always, I wish you loads of fun!

Spring in Madeira Day 6 - Santana, Queimadas, Pico das Pedras!

The tourism side of Santana ;)

 Also on this blog I must apologize for the slight delay. Not only that nearly a month passed between the last and the current video. This blog entry also comes five days after uploading the video. I can not stress enough how much of an advantage it is to like the AlionLive Facebook page or follow me on Twitter. The reason for the current delay is simple: Two albums are currently rapidly approaching completion and there is plenty to do. It is therefore to be feared that in the near future the AlionLive project will not make much progress for some time. But this will also end one day again ;).

Yeah, exactly!

For the video: Well rested from our quiet day in Funchal we wanted to do something bigger and decided to take an early morning bus to Santana at the north coast. From there we hiked towards Queimadas. This place is familiar to me from many, many of my Facebook friends photos and was high on the list of places to be visited. We did not expect the rather long and somewhat unspectacular ascent to Queimadas. It has also been reported by many, that there would be no motorable road to Queimadas, which turned out to be absolute nonsense. So notice: No matter what they tell you on the internet: You can drive by car to Queimadas and the road is very well developed. However, we completed the 800-900 meter ascent on foot of course. Once there, we were somewhat exhausted. After a rest with good cheese bread and Coral Tonica were fit again soon.

Yay! Now I have also some photos of Queimadas! :)

We had to abandon the original plan, to hike on to the Caldeirao Verde and Caldeirao do Inferno, due to the advanced time of day. So we decided to hike further to the Pico das Pedras. After a short rest in a cozy cafe on the Pico das Pedras we hiked towards Faial.

On the Pico das Pedras

Actually, we were making good time, but then we walked around a mountain on the wrong side, which dissuaded us far from the path. Only by a lucky chance, we caught the last bus to Funchal.

Breathtaking vista on Faial, Porto da Cruz, the eagle Rock and more

The soundtrack consists once again from pre-release versions of songs that are destined for the soon to be released album "Madeira" by Cimelium. By the way: Only 2 songs to go, then the album is complete :). Among the featured songs appropriately also is the latest addition "Queimadas". The soundtrack in detail:

00:00 Santana
05:00 Poiso
09:36 Queimadas
14:38 Santo da Serra
19:33 Câmara de Lobos
24:19 Rabacal
29:23 Parque do Lido 6:30 am

And now have fun with the video!

Spring in Madeira - Day 3 - Hiking from Santo da Serra to Faial

From the intro ;)

Currently it is going blow upon blow with the videos :). Just a week ago I uploaded the last video, and here's already the new one. While we are on the subject: From time to time I am asked why I am not, like My Let's Play colleagues, able to upload at least one video a day. This is simply impossible, because the editing of the video takes as long as it does. I have, for example, never seen a Let's Play with hundreds of cuts, transitions, and certainly none with subtitles. Ok, so this should be clarified ;).

The latest video, as the title suggests, is part of the series about our this year's trip to Madeira. In this third part the regular viewers will once again see many familiar places. Somewhat late we took a bus to Santo da Serra, where I was already on day 8 of the 2012 series. Initially we planned to hike the Levada do Furado to Ribeiro Frio. Fortunately we met two nice hikers who told us that this Levada is still closed. How long is that supposed to take? I mean: It is closed since early 2013 already. The information given by the nice hikers saved us hiking half the Levada and then have to hike back. But now we were absolutely clueless about where we should hike to. So we decided to hike north and to see where we end up. So we hiked through valleys and mountains in almost uncomfortably burning sun to Portela. There we rested a while and then made our way towards Faial via Referta. Those who have seen the 2012 series, will remember this route from the video of day 12. However, we missed a turnoff somewhere near Referta, which should lead us to the path of my 2012 hike. Due to extensive breaks and filming, we were already very late and the missed turnoff caused that we actually went to Porto da Cruz. There we found out that at least from there no buses were going anymore. So we went on a forced march to Faial, where we arrived after 8 pm. At this time really no buses are going to Funchal from there anymore. So we decided, after some daring plan games, to burden our small travel fund with the cost of a taxi ride to Funchal. Not nice, but still better than having to spend a night on the north side of the island or to do a nightly hike across the island ;).

The route

The soundtrack also this time consists not only from the works of the house of alionmind, but there are again two guest musicians presented. This time it is DecibelAlex and Anthony Charretier, two nice fellow musicians whom I met on Facebook. At this point I would like to say thanks for providing their wonderful pieces of music. The rest of the soundtrack consists of 3 tracks from the recently released alionsonny album "Continuity". But first I want to introduce the guest musicians properly:

Decibel Alex:

• SoundCloud
• Facebook
• Youtube

Anthony Charretier:

• SoundCloud
• Facebook
• Anthony's Blog

The soundtrack in detail:

• 00:00 - DecibelAlex - Sunset Dub
• 03:55 - Anthony Charretier - Poznan
• 09:02 - alionsonny - Brain Forest Chapter III
• 13:47 - alionsonny - Bulletproof
• 18:54 - alionsonny - Going Bonkers

The alionsonny album "Continuity" is available on

• iTunes
• Amazon
• Spotify

 And now: Have fun with the video!

Here is the REAL route up to the Penha d' Aguia!

If you've already seen the latest AlionLive video, you know what happened to me when I followed the hiking map. As promised, here is now a KML file with the correct route, so no one has to make the same bad experience:

KML Hiking route from Moinhos up to the Penha d'Aguia

As always, I optimized KMLs and route descriptions I found on the Internet and I do not take any responsibility. However, I have done my best.

And just for fun, here is a screenshot which compares my failed ascent route (in red) to the correct one (in yellow). Quite a difference ;)

Yellow -> Good / Red -> Bad

AlionLive Return 2 Madeira - Day 12 is here!

View from Cruz to the south

Yes, this time there was again quite a break since the last video. I will spare the explanation both, you and me. The wait was worth it in my opinion, because you can call this video quite "special" in more than one way .

The plot
I took the bus on the northern part of the island, to Faial. Near Moinhos, I tried unsuccessfully to climb the "Penha d' Aguia" (Eagle Rock). Due to a more than misleading route on the well-loved hiking map, this expedition was quite unpleasant. So I walked along the road towards Porto da Cruz. Since it was still quite early, I decided to continue hiking in the direction of Portela. A sudden tiredness, probably caused by a starting dengue infection, made me abandon that plan. However, I took a wrong turn somewhere and was forced to continue the hike. At the very end of the afternoon I reached Portela and strengthened me with the finest Espetada of the island. Fortunately right after that a bus was going back to Funchal. Once there, it was already dark and oddly enough, I was already incredibly hungry again. So I decided to end the day in the "Ca Te Espero" with a hearty meal and excellent wine.

Highlights 

One highlight is certainly the failed ascent and the subsequent rant. From this I had to cut away a lot of, because firstly the translation to English was almost impossible and secondly, because I have decided to keep my videos at least remotely "family-friendly" ;). In addition, I am driving several dogs mad and give a performance of some, in my opinion, typical "German English. Who asks what is the difference between my English and this, will be spanked ;). Apart from that there is a "rhythmic water hose" and of course many beautiful views of the most beautiful island in the world in acceptable weather.

Music
The soundtrack this time is entirely by my music project "Cimelium". With the exception of two tracks, all tracks are destined for the album "Madeira", which will be released in 2014.

What's next?
The next part (day 13) is very short, because this time I was not hiking alone, but with a very nice person. She will, but only briefly, and only if she agrees, appear in the video. You may have asked yourself what the title of this song means: It's the name of this particular person. So stay tuned for a short video with incomparably special moments .

And here is the current video: