Buses on Madeira
At the beginning, we were a little worried when we read from time to time on the Internet that the timetable can be obtained only in the Info Center and is not always up to date and other inaccurate information.
On the contrary, I have to say that bus service in Madeira is reliable, even though quite time-consuming, especially when you are traveling to the north or west of the island (2-3 hours), but the views are so beautiful that you can spent the time looking out the window and thanks to that the long journey is not boring.
Bus tickets
Tickets are cheap – from 3 EUR to 6 EUR per trip, depending on the number of zones. Bus tickets are purchased in the bus directly from the driver.
It is also good to pay attention to what the driver says, a few times he warned that it is necessary to change the bus but from the timetables you can´t read this information (we have experienced a change only in Machico, the driver repeats it again at the place of change but once when the bus was full, we experienced a family of French people who did pay attention and they found out about half an hour later that they were going elsewhere as they have missed the information to change the bus)
Bus companies
There are 4 bus companies in Madeira:
- Horarios Funchal
- SAM
- Rodoeste
- EACL
Timetable
All timetables are available on the internet, so you can plan everything from home and I really recommend to plan in advance because buses do not go very often, so it is good to plan your trip so that you don´t find out that you don´t have any way how to go back to Funchal.
Horarios Funchal and SAM also have a mobile app to download.
Bus stops
The have request stops in Madeira and they are almost everywhere (every couple of meters).
So when you are standing at a stop, you have to wave at the driver and when you get off, you have to press the button above your head so that the driver stops at the nearest stop.
If you don’t want to get off at the center of a town, it’s good to tell the driver where you want to go and ask him to remind you when to get off. In this case, I recommend that you sit as close as possible to the driver so that he does not forget you. Sometimes it was useful that the driver informed us about the best stop to get off because, for example, at one of the levadas we found out according to the map, which stop would be the best, but in the end there was one more better which was not marked on mapy.cz.
Also I recommend to check for the way back if the bus stop is on the same place accross the street or if you are coming back from another place, it is good to ask somebody if the bus goes from there, because once it happened to us that there was a bus stop but the bus was not passing via this stop and the stop was elsewhere…
Timetables are usually posted only at the main stop in the town, at all other stops there is no timetable or indication of bus number. Therefore, it is also good to always keep a certain time reserve because the timetable always shows only the main stop in the town and if you go from another, time may vary slightly. All buses depart from Funchal, so it is ideal to stay close to the center of Funchal when traveling by bus
Horarios Funchal – Small bus terminal station is at the beginning of the promenade in Rua José da Silva (https://mapy.cz/s/lakarafofa), only 5 stations, so it was never a problem to find our bus
SAM – the buses of this company had a stop at the beginning of Avenida do Mar (https://mapy.cz/s/gebomacohu)
Rodoeste – it took us a while to find a stop for this company, fortunately one lady advised us that one stop was at the Anadía shopping center (approximately here https://mapy.cz/s/hofenuvotu)
The main stop of Rodoeste should be here – https://mapy.cz/s/mezafasemu
2 Comments
Humberto
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