London has been taken over by vampires. Trendy clubs and bars are full of the flawless faces, perfect white teeth and super smooth skin of these creatures who're perpetually 17 years old. It’s like being in a Rihanna cum Pixie Lott cum The Saturdays music video. You see, thanks to this latest onslaught of films and TV shows about vampires, people don’t care anymore that these monsters can actually kill them. Because they’re just so damn sexy. Nobody even cares that they look too underage to drink. So they’re all safe to come out of hiding and mix with us, while humans over 25 get plastic surgery and teeth whitening, as they’re worried about looking too old in comparison. Now whenever I go out, everyone looks scarily like a 17 year-old. I just can’t tell anyone apart anymore.
I didn’t want to be sucked in by all this vampiric lust, so I headed for one of the few remaining old man’s pubs in London. They’re the only places you can be sure that no vampire would want to be seen alive in, since they smell of old people, pork scratchings and piss. It was refreshing to see so many old faces and none of the expressionless and characterless ones that I’d become so used to. The old bloke opposite started talking to me about getting away from it all. That’s what old people do; they talk to strangers. I wasn’t used to it and was surprised and uncomfortable at first, but then found him strangely alluring as he told me tales of a place where you can find sun, sea and seniors all year round. He had a glint in his eye and a faraway look as he spoke of this magic rock in the ocean and when I asked its name, he whispered it softly through his Guinness-soaked whiskers. Madeira.
As soon as I could be, I was away from the land of youth, plastic beauty and vampires, and arrived on the magic rock under the warm smile of the winter sun. And oh, what a sight for sore eyes! It was teaming with hundreds and hundreds of OAPs. The locals’ skin has been stained brown by the sun and their faces given character and warmth by deeper wrinkles than Gordon Ramsey’s grandad’s. Then there were all those toothless grins, or just one front tooth that danced to the rhythm of Madeirense. Or even the silver, eroding teeth with as many smooth undulating curves and monochrome tones as the cliff face in the bay at Camara dos Lobos.
On a visit to that little fishing village, I stopped off at one of the fisherman’s bars on the right hand side of the bay. One old sea dog there emptied pint glass after pint glass while filling my head with fantastical stories about the island. According to him, there are very short, ancient-looking creatures living here that are not actually human. They’re nicknamed os pequeninos (the little ones) by the Madeirans, and were native to the island when Zarco colonized it in 1425. This is contrary to what the guide and history books say, which is that there was no indigenous population when Zarco discovered Madeira.
He described them to me, pointing out their short height (about 4 ft 9 on average) and leather skin that has been dyed a deep, attractive tan colour and upon which a fancy swirling pattern of wrinkles has been gently carved. Far softer, he said, then the famous Madeiran leather, with an exquisite natural patina, grown more beautiful with age and the habits their character has etched onto it. He told me how their skin subtly changes colour throughout the day, as the sun’s light shines strongly and slowly fades. I guessed this tough old fisherman had once been in love with one of these os pequeninos. Then he explained the most interesting thing. Os pequeninos are perpetually 71, and have inspired the human locals to celebrate and embrace their age and maturity.
I wanted to find out more about these magical beings, so the old fisherman pointed me in the direction of Santana in northern Central Madeira. The town’s brightly coloured, tiny triangular houses with thatched roofs (palheiros), which you see all over postcards and fridge magnets of the municipality, were apparently the homes of os pequeninos, or so the old sea dog said. Although the guide books talk about them being the traditional homes of the humble farmers in the area, which have now either been knocked down, preserved for tourism or just used as storage places by today’s farmers.
I headed to Santana along, around, up and down the steep, windy roads that seemed only big enough for small people, I noted. When I arrived, I was disappointed by the lack of these palheiros. There were only a few left and the ones you can see on all the postcards were in a sort of small-scale Disneyland that cost 10 euros to get into. Although it’s still worth taking the trip to Santana, as the journey there and back from Funchal is so picturesque, especially looking down the cliff onto the seaside town of Ponta Delgada.
I bought a postcard from one of the palheiros that’d been turned into a gift shop and stopped off at a local café for something to drink. An albino dog eyed me curiously as I thought about where I could find these os pequeninos. He seemed to respond to my thoughts with the prick of an ear or the raise of an eyebrow and I began to think he could read my mind. That’s when he put his head on his paws and closed his eyes.
The owner of the café came out to give me my coffee. She caught sight of my postcard of the palheiros and enthusiastically began to tell me in pretty good English, the story about how one day, they were all abandoned at once. Os pequeninos suddenly uprooted and moved on out of Santana to go and live in other parts of the island. No one knows why, but they left all their little houses to the farmers. If you look carefully, she went on, you can find them in little communities around Madeira. I asked her if she knew of any particular places they might be, and she mentioned the look-out point at Balcoes by the Ribeira Frio.
The best way to get to this look-out point is to walk along by the levada. These levadas criss-cross Madeira, creating an irrigation system of concrete mini-canals cut into the rock that distribute water from the wet regions in the north to the drier ones in the south. Now though, they’re used just as much by tourists for hiking trails as they are by farmers. The levada walk to Balcoes, inaccessible to cars, is a relatively short and tame one, as it only takes an hour or so. And you have a beautiful view to keep you company of green, verdant mountains that turn to blue in the distance, framed by the branches of trees that form a canopy above the levada. Slow and still up above, with the river rushing wildly below.
Eventually, I came across a little café overlooking the valley. Inside, a woman was cooking sardines. I held up my postcard of the palheiros, as she didn’t speak much English. She smiled her one-toothed grin and inexplicably pointed at the sardines and then down into the valley where there was a cluster of houses. I made my way down into it, not really knowing where I was going and became aware of an eerie wailing sound. It scared me at first, but as the sun continued as brightly and warmly as ever, the sound seemed to turn into more of a soothing singing voice.
I passed a few houses with their doors shut, and then spotted a woman sitting in front of hers. She was knitting, even though the sun was shining in December and she was small and stout, yet had hands like shovels. They looked like they could dig deep down into the earth. But as she knitted, they moved nimbly and delicately. And she had the oldest but most beautiful skin I’d ever seen. But what struck me more were her warm, sparkling eyes set into her wrinkly leather skin like black diamonds. I thought she must be one of the os pequeninos. Her eyes greeted me as I approached, with a calmness that made me confident enough to say hello. She spoke back to me in perfect English, like the young Madeirans who learn it at school from an early age.
I asked her what she was knitting; it looked like a tiny colourful hat. She told me it was a tiny hat. Who was it for? I asked, interested, and she replied that it was for the Freira. On seeing my expression, she threw her head back and laughed before pointing at the birds circling above. I looked at them and realised that the strange wailing sound was coming from them. It gets cold in the mountains, she added, by way of explanation. And they’re also in return for the sardines, she continued, acknowledging my puzzled face. Apparently the Freira catch sardines and bring them to her. She then sells them to people in the village. She also sells them to the people who make Madeiran wine, as they place them on top of the bottles and then sell them onto tourists. She didn’t exactly know why. People do strange things, was all she said about that.
I asked her how she got the Freiras to catch her sardines. She simply replied that she asked them to. So os pequeninos could talk to animals? Not all, she said, only a few, and she listed which ones. The Madeiran Wall lizard, Madeira Pipistrelle, which is a bat, a scabbard fish (so os pequeninos never eat the tasty ubiquitous Madeiran fish), albino dogs (this made me wonder about the small café owner in Santana), goats and chickens, which they also share their houses with, so the chickens share their eggs. She went on to tell me about the island’s famous singing goat owned by one of the os pequeninos, the only animal she’s ever known that has been able to talk in a human’s language. It travels around and through the mountains of Curral des Freiras on its owner’s truck, its singing voice amplified through a massive loudspeaker strapped to the front. She told me to go up and see the view, and I’d probably be able to spot the truck winding its way around the mountain.
Later, I found out that Freiras are in fact, very rare birds, and you don’t often get to see them at all, let alone near Balcoes. They’re mostly seen in Pico do Ariero, a nearby mountain range. I also discovered that the reason these birds are called Freira (nun, in English) is because they emit calls that sound like ghostly wails, and for many years these sounds were interpreted by the inhabitants of Curral das Freiras (Nun's Valley) as being the calls of the suffering souls of the nuns who’d fled there to escape the spate of pirate attacks on Funchal in 1566.
There was another amazing view at Curral des Freiras, with luscious green mountains all around, stretching themselves out to sleep for as far as the eye could see, surrounding you in a stillness and quietness that you just wanted to breathe in so it’d become part of you. And then I heard it. A deep, low voice that rumbled up from the base of the valley, echoing off the sides of the mountains, as if they were throwing it back into the air. Then I saw the truck as it wound up the steep road. A small white one, with a large loudspeaker on the front above the windscreen. The voice was melancholy yet soothing. You couldn’t hear any words exactly, but you could tell there were some. It was so slow and deep, it sounded like a record being played at the wrong speed. It brought on a soft sadness at the same time as a bracing exhilaration.
In the evening on my last night, I decided to go for a drink in Funchal. I headed for Rua da Praia near the Old Town, the street the old fisherman had recommended, where all the bars were full of locals and, sometimes, os pequeninos. Places that felt comfortable with a slow pace of life and old age. I sat at a table outside with my pint of lager and free peanuts, and thought about Madeira’s history and its ability to adapt to survive. How its biggest export used to be sugar, but when the Caribbean started exporting it more cheaply, it had to change and became a successful wine producer instead. And then when the vineyards perished due to disease, it had to be resourceful again. This time it played on its climate of warm sunshine all year round and low humidity to sell itself as a recuperative destination for rich people getting over diseases like TB. Yet medicines have improved along with transport, and farther away places are now easier to reach for a bit of winter sun, and they're also cheaper as they don’t have the euro.
I wandered on to have something to eat at Jaquet down Rua de Santa Maria in Funchal’s Old Town. The old fisherman had told me it served the best scabbard fish in the area. After the jolly owner had taken my order, I began to think about how Madeira should sell itself now in order to survive. And to me, it’s simple. What sets it apart, is that it’s a place where you can escape the culture of youth. It's mostly older tourists who go there, and the island appears to have an aging population. I watched the crowd in the restaurant, a mixture of middle-aged, old and very old, chattering and joking with each other across the tables. The sizzling atmosphere wasn’t just from the fish frying in the pans. I felt like I was in a local’s home at Christmas, with their grans and grandads. Everyone here really does embrace their age and aren’t ashamed of it at all. Visit Madeira and for a week or two at least, you can have a holiday from feeling bad about growing old. And these days, that means anyone over 30. So even though you might not actually see any os pequeninos, you certainly won’t find any of those plastic vampires here.
