PR18 Levada do Rei: the empty Madeira levada most visitors miss

We hike PR18 on the days PR6 is rammed. Last August, a Saturday, peak season, we walked from the Quebradas trailhead to the Ribeiro Bonito waterfall and back and counted six other people the whole way. Six. On the same weekend the Rabaçal shuttle queue was forty minutes long and the lagoon at 25 Fontes had a queue for the photo spot.

PR18 Levada do Rei is the trail almost nobody books. It’s a 5.3km walk each way through deep laurissilva on the north coast, finishing at a waterfall most guidebooks don’t mention. No tunnels, no torches, no permits to fight over on a broken government website. Just a wide levada path through old laurel forest with the sound of the channel beside you.

Four years living in Ponta do Sol. Here’s how we actually do this hike.

The trail in three sentences

PR18 runs 5.3km each way from the Quebradas water treatment plant in São Jorge to the Ribeiro Bonito waterfall, deep in the laurissilva. Around 3 hours 30 of walking out and back, moderate difficulty, almost flat (the levada follows the contour at roughly 550m altitude the whole way). No tunnels, no exposed sections, no cables. The levada is wider than most and the path stays beside it the entire route.

Where it starts: Quebradas, São Jorge

The trailhead is the Estação de Tratamento de Águas das Quebradas, above the village of São Jorge on the north coast. From Ponta do Sol it’s around 1 hour by car: south coast via the VR1 to Ribeira Brava, then over the spine through São Vicente, then east along the ER-101 to São Jorge. The drive is half the day. You climb out of the dry south, hit cloud at Encumeada, drop down to São Vicente’s green wall, then trace the north coast east past Boaventura and Arco de São Jorge.

Park at the water treatment plant. There’s space for around 15 cars on the dirt strip beside the building. The trail starts on the far side of the plant, signed with the green-and-yellow PR18 marker. No booth, no shuttle, no tickets at the trailhead. You walk straight in.

Phone signal cuts out about 500m down the trail. Tell someone where you’re going if you’re hiking alone, same as any north-coast levada.

What makes it different

A few things put PR18 in a different category from PR6 and PR9.

The first is no tunnels. Both PR6 and PR9 thread through unlit tunnels you need a torch for. PR9 has six of them, wet and dark and dripping. PR18 has none. The levada runs along the cliff face the whole way, open to the sky, with the forest closing in overhead but never going underground. If you’ve turned around at a PR9 tunnel before because the kid was scared or the torch died, this is the levada that works.

The path is also wider. Most levadas have a 60cm maintenance path beside the channel, one person at a time, with a drop to one side. PR18’s path runs around a metre wide for most of the route, and the levada itself is wider than usual. You can walk beside someone and have a conversation instead of single-filing it. The drop on the outer side is still there in a few places, but the path is forgiving.

The headline though is the crowd, or the lack of one. PR18 doesn’t show up on the “top 10 Madeira hikes” lists. The trailhead has no café, no shuttle, no Instagram waterfall reel pulling crowds. The drive from Funchal is over an hour each way, which kills the day-trip market. What you get is a levada in laurissilva that feels like the trail looked twenty years ago, before everyone showed up.

The forest sections are spectacular. The trail passes through dense laurissilva with hanging lichens, giant til trees, and stretches where the canopy closes overhead into a green vegetation tunnel. There’s a historic São Jorge grain mill near the start, still turning, powered by the levada water itself. We always stop and look at it for a minute.

The Ribeiro Bonito waterfall ending

The trail dead-ends at Ribeiro Bonito, a steep amphitheatre where the levada is fed by a waterfall dropping into a mossy bowl. The IFCN signage calls it “an isolated natural sanctuary.” That sounds like marketing copy and it’s not. The bowl is genuinely closed-in: walls of fern and laurel, water falling 30m or so into a shallow pool, no signal, no other walkers most days.

You can’t swim here (the pool is shallow and cold and the rocks are slick) but you can eat lunch on the flat stones beside the levada with the waterfall behind you. We bring bolo do caco, a tin of sardines, sometimes a piece of fruit cake from the Friday market in Ponta do Sol. Forty minutes at the waterfall before the walk back.

The return is the same trail. There’s no loop option. It looks the same in reverse but you notice different things on the way out. The light angles change. The mill catches different sun.

Pairing it with the north coast

PR18’s location on the north coast is the gift that turns a 4-hour hike into a full day worth driving for. From São Jorge you’re 10 minutes from the Santana casas de colmo (the thatched A-frame houses on the postcards), 25 minutes from Faial, and 40 minutes back over the spine via São Vicente.

What we do most often: drive up via São Vicente, hit PR18 by 9am, finish around 1pm. Lunch at Restaurante O Colmo in Santana, 10 minutes from the trailhead. Order the espetada and the bolo do caco with garlic butter. Afternoon at the casas de colmo at Santana for 20 minutes (it’s a tourist stop but the houses are real and the gardens are worth a walk). Then the drive back via São Vicente, stopping at the Cascata dos Anjos, the waterfall that falls onto the ER-101 road and you literally drive under it. Back in Ponta do Sol by 6pm for a swim at the pier.

That’s a full Madeira day. The kind of day people who fly in for a week don’t fit because they spend three hours on PR1 permits.

When to go

Anytime. This is the rainy-day backup when PR6 is full and the PR1 webcam is shrouded.

• January, February: the north coast is wet and the laurissilva looks the way it should: dripping, moss-thick, atmospheric. Pack a proper rain shell. The trail rarely floods because the path drains off the channel.
• March to May: prime. Flowers in the forest, dry-enough trail, comfortable 14-18°C at altitude.
• June to September: the south coast is in the high 20s. PR18 at 550m stays around 18-22°C, often with cloud cover. This is when the crowd contrast is starkest: the Rabaçal car park is rammed and PR18 has six cars at the trailhead.
• October, November: our favourite. The summer crowds are gone, the laurissilva is green, the drive is empty.
• December: check the IFCN page the morning of. North-coast storms occasionally close sections after rockfall.

The trail is open as of this writing (June 2026). Current status lives on the IFCN Madeira trail status page. We check it the night before any north-coast hike.

PR18 requires a permit through the simplifica.madeira.gov.pt portal (€4.50 adults, free under 12). The booking flow is the same broken one we cover in our Madeira hiking permits 2026 guide. Madeira.fun/hiking works better. Book 24-48 hours ahead in shoulder season. We’ve never seen PR18 hit its cap.

FAQ

How does PR18 compare to PR6? PR6 is the famous one: 25 springs feeding a green lagoon, cloud-forest postcard. PR18 is the quiet sibling: longer levada, no tunnels, a waterfall ending, almost empty. PR6 is the photo you came for. PR18 is the walk you remember. If you’re choosing one, do PR6 first. If you’re staying a week or more, do PR18 second and you’ll prefer it.

Is PR18 family-friendly? More than PR6 or PR9. No tunnels, wider path, no scrambling. The 10.6km round trip is the limiting factor for younger kids. From around age 9 it works. The drops along the outer edge of the levada are real in a few sections, so a hand on the small ones in those spots.

Can I bring a dog? Yes, on a lead. PR18 is one of the better Madeira levadas for dogs. No tunnels, no cable sections, the channel water is technically off-limits but the path runs flat. Bring water for them. There’s nowhere to refill on the trail.

Is there parking? Yes, a dirt strip beside the water treatment plant at Quebradas with space for around 15 cars. Free. We’ve never seen it full. If it’s overflowing (highly unlikely) there’s road parking 300m back toward the village.

Is the return route different? No. PR18 is an out-and-back. You walk the same path home. There’s no loop option from the Ribeiro Bonito end. The trail dead-ends in the amphitheatre.

How fit do I need to be? Moderate fitness is plenty. The trail is almost flat (35m total elevation gain over 5.3km) and the path is forgiving. The 10.6km round-trip distance is what catches casual walkers. If you’re comfortable with a 3-hour flat walk, you’re comfortable with PR18.

Do I need a guide? No. The trail is marked, well maintained, and impossible to lose (the levada is the path). If you want company, Alex at mountain-alex.com sometimes includes PR18 in his Sunday community hike rotation. Worth asking on the Digital Nomads Madeira Slack.

The bigger picture

PR18 is our pick when guests want a real levada day without the Rabaçal logistics. Most visitors fly to Madeira, book PR1, get rained out, panic-book PR6 for the next clear day, and leave without ever knowing PR18 exists. That’s the visitor pattern. Living here changes it.

For the full island view, start with the Madeira hiking pillar. Working out where to base yourself? Most of the famous trails sit closer to the south coast, so see where to stay in Madeira for hiking. After PR18 we usually loop in a north-coast lunch, and our things to do in Madeira post has the Santana and São Vicente picks we keep coming back to.

Stay a month and do the quiet trails too

A week in Madeira is a PR1 permit, a PR6 attempt, and a flight home. A month is PR18 on a Tuesday in October with the forest to yourself, the drive back via São Vicente with the windows down, and dinner at the pier in Ponta do Sol because Wednesday is a writing day.

We run Banana House year-round, one-month minimum. Seven private rooms in Ponta do Sol on the dry south coast, one hour from the PR18 trailhead, 25 minutes from Rabaçal. The kind of base where you can wait for a clear PR1 morning and fill the wet days with the levadas nobody else is on.

Pick a month. We’ll see you at the waterfall. 🌿