Madeira s highest Peaks

Having booked this hike for months, we were rather disappointed to find that the ‘stairway to heaven’ walk was actually closed last year??!!! What were we paying for??? It turns out that a ‘full’ day tour was actually half a day. The bizarre route up the mountain, off scale, was incredibly difficult, so much so that we abandoned the rest of the walk. The guide was not in the least bit interested. Advice to those booking this trip - don’t!!! £75 for a mini bus is extortionate. Find your own way and pay €3 to do the proper walk.

I booked a hike from Pico Ariero to Pico Ruivo as offered on the Get my Guide site. This was advertised as a moderate hike which having read reviews of I was capable of doing. Cancellation is 24 hours prior to the hike so I was disappointed to receive an email that did not give us to time to cancel telling me the hike route was changed due to fires the previous year. The hike should not still be being offered if it cannot be completed. The change meant we did not see The Stairway to Heaven and the guide appeared to have added on an hours very hard (his words and the other hikers) mountainous climb with no view up to the start of Pico Ruivo. We stopped in a lay-by to be taken to a boulder led bush lined trail. I confess to find it very challenging and fell a few minutes behind the group, the guide did not check on me at all and strode ahead at the front with no input into the hike or group. Once the first part was completed I was upset that I had not been given a chance to change to a different hike and by the lack of any communication from the guide. They should have given me notice with enough time I could change the hike and they should not be offering hikes that no longer are possible. Everyone on my trip had booked to see Pico Arieiro. Very disappointing with a guide that has no interest in the people he is leading and a company that is not honest in what they are offering.

The PR1 route remains closed, so we were offered an alternative to access Pico Ruivo from the north and then walk back to Teixeira. This walk ended up being considerably shorter than we were expecting, obviously if the route is closed, it is closed and there's nothing the tour company can do. Although I did expect the amount of time of the walk to be comparible. The guide added very little to the experience (it felt like the very bare minimum), he didn't seem to like people very much- perhaps he is fed up of people turning up in jeans and tracksuits with inappropriate shoes and not equipped for any kind of mountain conditions? We had booked this well in advance to celebrate a birthday and really wanted to complete a long challenging walk which we didn't get, so we have had a mediocre day. Mountain microclimate being what they are also mean we didn't get good views, again can't be helped and I've tried to be objective in the score. Perhaps the conditions today and the group of people made the guide decide it was best for the group to do a short walk? There was also an issue with the minibus which appeared to be overheating so we had to stop twice whilst this was addressed on the way out, the bus did get us back without foing into limp mode again but there was quite a lot of nasty fumes coming into the vehicle. All in all, pretty average and not what we wanted from the day.