The East Tour from Funchal: What Eight Hours Toward Santana Actually Get You
Updated October 1, 2026 · 9 min read
The short answer: the east tour is a driving day with short stops – three to three and a half hours in the vehicle, five to seven stops, and Santana itself is twenty minutes, not an open-air village. Book it if you want variety: thatched-roof houses, laurel forest, a bare peninsula and a summit stop in one day. If you want pure scenery and have only one day, the west is the better loop. For most people set on the east, the one with the most reviews is also the shortest: the east tour via Pico Arieiro, Santana and Laurissilva, €36.48 for 7 hours.
See prices and dates for the east tour via Pico Arieiro, Santana and Laurissilva
The east tour sells itself on a single image: the triangular thatched-roof houses of Santana. Anyone booking for that reason alone should know what the rest of the day looks like – because Santana is the shortest stop of them all.
The maths: eight hours, how much of it on the bus?
Three east loops show the pattern. The east tour via Pico Arieiro, Santana and Laurissilva runs €36.48 for 7 hours (4.8 stars, 3,238 reviews), the full-day east tour with a rum tasting €35 for 8 hours (4.7 stars, 1,804 reviews), and the guided east tour with a laurel forest walk €40 for 7 hours (4.8 stars, 1,413 reviews). All three drive the same loop: over the mountains heading north, along the north-east coast to Santana, down to the eastern tip, back along the south-east coast.
Roughly speaking, you spend three to three and a half hours in the vehicle. That’s not a shortcoming, it’s geography: Madeira has no straight roads. From Funchal to Pico do Areeiro is around 45 minutes of switchbacks, from there to Ribeiro Frio twenty, to Santana just under thirty. The rest is spread across five to seven stops of twenty to forty-five minutes plus a lunch break. Anyone picturing eight hours of actual time at stops under “full-day tour” is doing the maths wrong.
Five east loops compared
| Tour | Duration | From | Rating | Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| East tour via Pico Arieiro, Santana and Laurissilva | 7 hours | €36.48 | 4.8 (3,238) | Anyone doing the east for the first time |
| Full-day east tour with a rum tasting | 8 hours | €35 | 4.7 (1,804) | People who want the whole day out and a tasting at the end |
| Guided east tour with a laurel forest walk | 7 hours | €40 | 4.8 (1,413) | Walkers who want Ribeiro Frio on foot, not just the car park |
| Pico do Areeiro to Santana in a 4x4 | 7 hours | €67 | 4.7 (331) | Small groups who would rather sit in an off-road vehicle than a van |
| Nun’s Valley half-day tour | 3h 30m | €28 | 4.5 (2,391) | Anyone for whom eight hours is too long, and families with small children |
See availability for the guided east tour with the laurel forest walk
Santana, honestly: twenty minutes, not an open-air village
The palheiros – the white-and-red houses with the thatched roof reaching down to the ground – were once the ordinary homes and outbuildings of the north coast. Around a hundred still exist across the island, few of them in their original state. What you see on the tour is the group of restored and partly rebuilt houses in the centre of Santana, by the town hall, with handicrafts inside.
This is a photo stop: twenty minutes, rarely more than half an hour, and you won’t be standing there alone. Santana itself is a modern town with a supermarket and concrete buildings – the houses within it are a well-kept ensemble, not a preserved village.
Anyone expecting an untouched settlement will be disappointed. Anyone who knows what’s coming will still find it worthwhile: this building style exists nowhere else, and the green north coast is a different planet from Funchal’s hotel zone.
Ribeiro Frio: the laurel forest you can touch
For many, the secret highlight. Ribeiro Frio sits at around 860 metres in the Laurissilva, the subtropical laurel forest that exists nowhere else on this scale and is protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site. There’s a trout farm there and a short, almost level levada path to the Balcões viewpoint – a good twenty minutes each way, wide, with no climb.
Whether your tour includes the walk is the deciding difference between two otherwise identical-looking offers; some only stop at the car park. The guided east tour with the laurel forest walk puts it in the title, which is the clearest signal you get. Anyone who wants to walk properly is better served by the levada walks anyway.
Ponta de São Lourenço: look, don’t walk
The eastern tip is the opposite of the rest of Madeira: bare, treeless, reddish-brown, shaped by the wind. It’s dry out there, which is why nothing tall grows.
A day tour stops at the viewpoint: look, take photos, get back on. Walking the headland is an undertaking in its own right – around seven kilometres there and back, two and a half to four hours depending on pace, and not a single tree or shelter along the whole stretch. That belongs on a different day, not in an eight-hour programme with five other destinations.
The Areeiro stop is not the sunrise tour
Same mountain, different time of day, different odds. At 1,818 metres, the east tour stops mid-morning. By then the sun has already heated the slopes and moist air is rising – clouds tend to form as the day goes on rather than clear. The famous sea-of-clouds photos are taken early; by late morning you stand in the mist just as often as above it.
That’s not an argument against the stop, but it is one against the expectation. Anyone who wants the summit as the main goal should book it separately – we have a piece on Pico do Areeiro with kids for that; the early departures are covered under sunrise and sunset.
Machico, Camacha and the rest of the loop
On the way back, depending on the operator, you’ll pass Machico and Camacha. Machico on the south-east coast is where it all began: the first Portuguese landed here in 1419, and until the late 15th century the town was the island’s capital. Today it’s a quiet bay with one of Madeira’s few sandy beaches – the sand was brought in. Camacha, high above Funchal, is the wicker-weaving town; in practice that usually means a workshop with a shop attached. A nice way to round things off, not a destination in its own right.
The sentence that decides everything on Madeira
In Funchal and in the mountains, the weather is different – at the same time. Along the promenade the sun is shining while the peaks sit in cloud and it’s raining in the north. That’s why a guided tour is worth more here than elsewhere: the guide sees in the morning where the weather is heading and reverses the order or swaps a stop. In a rental car, you drive your plan – sometimes straight into a grey wall. More on this in Funchal weather versus the mountains.
East or west, if you only have one day
Honest answer: for most people, the west. It’s more spectacular scenically, and demand shows it – the big west 4WD loop collects 9,707 reviews, while the most reviewed east tour sits at 3,238. The east wins if you want variety rather than pure panoramas: thatched-roof houses, laurel forest, a historic town, a peninsula that feels like a different country. Anyone with two days should do both; the routes barely overlap.
Who this tour isn’t for
Anyone who wants to hike. Here you get out, look, and get back in; the longest walk is twenty minutes to Balcões.
Anyone sensitive to winding mountain roads. The stretch over Poiso and down to Santana is one switchback after another, plus 1,800 metres of altitude change in an hour. If you’re unsure how you’ll cope, talk it through with your doctor before you book.
Anyone who dislikes stops under half an hour. A round trip gives you an overview. Anyone who wants to linger somewhere should book a private tour.
We deliberately don’t state a minimum age: operators set different limits, and what applies is on the respective booking page. Some routes require a ticket bought in advance – on a guided tour, the operator takes care of that.
Our Recommendation
For most people: the east tour via Pico Arieiro, Santana and Laurissilva, €36.48 for 7 hours. It has the most reviews of any east tour, at 4.8 stars, and at seven hours it is an hour shorter than the eight-hour versions – which on a day with this much driving you notice. The rum-tasting day costs €35, a euro and a half less, and takes an hour longer.
See prices and dates for the east tour via Pico Arieiro, Santana and Laurissilva
If you want to walk at Ribeiro Frio: the guided east tour with the laurel forest walk, €40 for 7 hours. The extra three and a half euros buy the one stop where the east is more than a viewpoint.
For small groups who want the loop in an off-road vehicle: Pico do Areeiro to Santana in a 4x4, €67 for 7 hours. Nearly twice the price, and the route is the same – worth it for the vehicle and the group size, not for the itinerary.
If eight hours sounds like too much: the Nun’s Valley half-day tour, €28 for three and a half hours. A different direction entirely, but an honest answer for anyone who doesn’t want to spend a holiday day on a bus.
See availability for the Nun’s Valley half-day tour
For whom the east is the wrong choice: anyone who wants to hike, anyone who gets carsick on switchbacks, and anyone who only has one day and wants the most spectacular scenery – that one is the west.
Worth a look next
Jeep and 4x4 tours – 73 offers from €32.63, median €68.40. This is where most of the east loops run.
What you should have seen in Madeira – the overview, if you’re still sorting out your plans.
