Desertas and Selvagens: the islands of silence

Desertas: the profile on the horizon

Look south-east from any Funchal viewpoint and there they are: three blades of rock, Ilhéu Chão, Deserta Grande and Bugio, that almost everyone photographs without knowing what they protect. A nature reserve since 1990, the Desertas are inhabited only by nature wardens and by fauna that no longer fitted anywhere else.

• The Mediterranean monk seal, one of the most endangered seals on the planet. The Desertas colony, reduced to fewer than ten animals in the 1980s, was brought back from the abyss and is today one of Europe's great conservation success stories. The animals have even returned to the coast of Madeira itself.
• Hogna ingens, the largest wolf spider in the world, endemic to a single valley on Deserta Grande. Do not worry: it lives where no visitor goes, and it is the one being protected from us, not the other way round.
• Seabird colonies, and a sea that on the way frequently offers dolphins and, with luck, whales.

How to visit: on full-day expeditions from Funchal with licensed maritime operators, catamarans and sailing boats that know the reserve's rules, the permitted approach zones and the moods of the channel. Landing, when conditions and rules allow it, is brief and accompanied; the essence of the experience is lived from the sea, at human scale, with silence all around.

Selvagens: the end of the Portuguese map

Some 280 kilometres to the south, closer to the Canaries than to Funchal, the Selvagens are the most isolated territory in Portugal and one of the country's oldest nature reserves, protected since 1971. Selvagem Grande and Selvagem Pequena are, above all, a republic of birds: they host one of the largest colonies of Cory's shearwater in the world, whose nocturnal chorus is described by those who have heard it as one of the strangest and most beautiful sounds in the Atlantic.

Only nature wardens live there permanently, the most isolated inhabitants in Portugal. Visiting requires: prior authorisation from Madeira's conservation authorities, a vessel capable of a long ocean crossing (typically yachts en route between Madeira and the Canaries, or occasional organised expeditions) and humility before open water. There is no tourist quay and no visitor infrastructure. There is one of the last genuinely rare experiences in Europe.

Why this matters, even if you never go

The Desertas and the Selvagens are the insurance policy of Madeiran nature, the places where the archipelago keeps what it cannot afford to lose. Every licensed visit funds the wardens; every rule respected keeps the pact. And there is something powerful in knowing that, a few miles from a destination with millions of visitors, there are islands where the only timetable is the tide.