Park by the gift shop, walk two minutes up a stone path, and the ground simply falls away. Below you, ringed by towering peaks on every single side, sits a tiny village at the bottom of what looks exactly like a volcanic crater: Curral das Freiras, the pen of the nuns.
The name isn't decoration. In 1566, when French pirates sacked Funchal, the nuns of the Santa Clara convent grabbed what they could and fled up into these mountains, hiding in this near-unreachable valley. For centuries the only way in or out was a steep footpath down the cliffs. There was no road until the twentieth century. Imagine carrying everything you owned down into that.
Today the village is famous for two things grown in the valley: sweet chestnuts and a cherry-and-chestnut liqueur that'll warm you from the inside. Stand at the railing and take in the sheer scale of it: the walls, the drop, the houses like grains of rice at the bottom. Then, if you've got time, drive down into the crater itself. The road that gets you there is half the adventure, and the view up from the bottom is just as good as the view down.
Local tip: go in the morning. By afternoon the valley fills with haze and the peaks vanish. The little path to the true viewpoint is past the gift shop, not the first railing most people stop at; walk the extra three minutes for the real thing.
