Visiting the Galaxy Far, Far Away – Day 2
Stop 6: Pico do Areeiro – Khofar: Mountaintop shots
Thursday morning arrived with a forecast of clouds and rain for the highest parts of the island, including Pico do Areeiro (also sometimes spelled Arieiro). Pico do Areeiro is the third tallest mountain on Madeira, and popular with hikers, cyclists, and sunrise/sunset photographers. And the summit is easily reached by car, with a restaurant, gift shop, and giant Death Star-shaped radar station. We drove up, going from clouds above to clouds misting around us. Several key Khofar establishing shots for “Day” (the fourth episode of The Acolyte) were filmed by the second unit up here. From the lookout post on the peak, you could face northeast, and that’s the shot of the deep canyon a green mountain on the left with a closer mountain in shadow on the right. With the cloud cover, all I got to see was the outline of the mountain on the right.
A view to the north should have revealed rockier, more barren ridges with a distinctive silhouette, used in another shot, but instead of clouds floating below these peaks, I had nothing but white. At least I had my rubber duck yellow rain jacket to keep me dry while I fished out my photo prints to try to line up shots in the rain. Later in that episode, there are several shots of the setting sun over layer of clouds with flattened treetops poking through. These were filmed facing west, likely from the back deck of the gift shop, into the deep Curral das Freiras (Valley of the Nuns). While I could begin to line up the slope on the right of the pictures, the dense fog blocked any real view. Next time, I guess. Still, hikers paid no attention to the drizzle as they set off on the mountain trails. Of course, after we started down the mountain, we descended through the cloud layer and had a clear view all the way down to the cruise ships in Funchal.
Stop 7: Poço das Casas, Falca, Boaventura – Khofar: Eclipse II landing site and trail
This is the most challenging The Acolyte shooting location to reach – for both the film crew and for the Madeira visitor. In the fourth episode (“Day”), Mae and the Stranger, posing as Qimir, land their ship, Eclipse II, on a small flat terrace, then pack up their gear, cross a bridge and hike along a trail on the side of a hill, and this is where it all was filmed. Poço das Casas (also called Poço dos Namorados “Lover’s Pool”) is a scenic waterfall near the hamlet of Falca in Boaventura. While we knew where the terrace and bridge were on the map, finding a way to get there was a challenge for us. Gerardo had told me that to bring all the filming equipment and props to the site, they devised an overhead cable car that would carry the gear from the roadway down a steep slope and across the stream to the terrace. Certainly a lot easier than having to hand carry all the way down the trail from street access farther away.
Without the cable system for us, we had to find that pedestrian access point. Through trial and error, we discovered it was tucked in at the last set of houses along the road (see sidebar). We walked down the road between the homes and it petered out into a trail past an abandoned home and some goats. Reaching a spot where I could see the bridge and the terrace across the stream, I cut off alone and with some false starts, found the pedestrian bridge and crossed over. The grass was a bit taller than when filmed, but lining up the stone walls holding up the terraces as well as the mountain outlines up the valley easily confirmed the location. I took my photos, recorded some video in the rain, and was ready to find the spot where Qimir and Mae are on a hiking trail toward Kelnacca’s forest. I figured that it was up the trail past the bridge cutoff and went back to the west side of the stream.
And proceeded to the high ground – through knee-deep blackberry brambles onto an abandoned grape vine terrace with even taller, thornier brambles. Unable to line up a shot here, I climbed up to a second level and realized that there’s no way they would have come up on this forsaken set of terraces to film. I had two unfortunate options: hop down the two terraces without seeing the ground below the deep vines, or climb up another level and high-step laterally through a long fight of brambles before reaching the trail as it passed through the vineyard. Going up is always easier than going down and several sweaty minutes later I made it to sweet thornless freedom. Climbing up to the main trail, I found Hugo and we realized it was the obvious place to have filmed the Qimir/Mae trail scenes, right at a nice rise and bend of the trail. Why make filming harder than it has to be?
Reaching Poço das Casas
To reach it, park safely on the main road (Estrada da Falca) just before it meets the main road Estrada Manuel Vincente Xavier, and walk south down the unnamed road just below the bus shelter & picnic tables. This little road quickly becomes a driveway then just a trail out once past the houses. Eventually the trail will hook sharply east with a wall along the hill, then curve southwest and begin descending. This bulge of the hillside is where Qimir and Mae have a talk while walking the trail, and you can line up shots in both directions. The view to the north doesn’t much match the screenshots, with the background completely altered with the vertical forests of Khofar.
Continue on, and you’ll pass an abandoned vineyard on the downhill side. At the end of the vineyard is a stone stairway down the terraces. Before you reach the final terrace, the trail turns north, cutting between the vineyard terraces before turning to the stream and the bridge. Cross the bridge and you’re at the abandoned terraces where the ship landed and the pair unpacked their gear. The mountains up the valley are pretty easy to line up, even with a little cloud cover. If you want to reach the namesake pool of Poço das Casas, then instead of crossing the bridge, continue north on the trail along the stream maybe another 100 feet. I foolishly forgot to check this romantic spot out.
Stop 8: Miradouro do Calhau da Forna do Bode – Olega: establishing shot
Back on the road, we headed east to Caniçal, the easternmost and geologically oldest part of the island, and home to the final two planets of our Madeira Star Wars adventure. First up was the Calhau da Forna do Bode. The cliffside city on Olega, with its Jedi outpost, had been digitally added to the flat-topped Ponta do Bode peninsula for several shots in both day and night conditions for “Revenge / Justice,” The Acolyte’s second episode. The lookout point, or miradouro (literally “golden sight”), where they filmed from, was somewhere on a cliff facing east to Ponta do Bode. After trying some off-road forest action to see if we could get closer to the viewpoint, we swung back and parked at the Caniçal cemetery.
Walking northward, Hugo and I crossed over a gutter-sized levada and entered a Martian landscape of lifeless red rocks and silt. Heading up to the cliff’s edge, we could easily spot the Ponda do Bode. Lining up the shots was a little more challenging – each was from a slightly different spot. One nighttime shot that contained the landed Eclipse II was filmed by having a model of the ship placed in the foreground on site. Some of the final shots in the episode have slightly different background rock formations in the ocean, including one with an arch. These are real, but some of them have been moved closer in the shot to appear larger. Satisfied with my pictures, we played a bit of hide and seek among the spires before tracking red mud all the way to the jeep.
Stop 9: Ponta de São Lourenço – Ueda: establishing shot
Heading eastward still, we passed through the industrial port at Caniçal and then a fancy resort before hitting the end of the road, the trailhead to the eastern edge of Madeira, the rugged treeless peninsula of Ponta de São Lourenço. This spot is where Mae stands as she faces the hilltop settlement on Ueda across a small bay from her vantage point at the beginning of the first episode of The Acolyte, “Lost / Found”. This spot was also used for some promo materials for the show as well. In becoming Ueda, the scale of this landscape was drastically changed. Instead of a natural human scale where the mountain would dwarf any human settlement on it, the town’s buildings loom huge. The fish farms in the bay were digitally removed and a stone path across the water was added, connecting to a trail up to the town arch. The island on the right side was removed, and replaced with two top-heavy stone towers, but a tiny sea arch on the main rock remains.
With no paved roads and no desire to damage this parkland with vehicles, Gerardo had told me that crews arrived in the middle of the night to hand carry equipment for 45 minutes from the parking area to the filming location so that they could begin filming at first light. How could I find a filming spot that is about 45 minutes walking in the dark carrying gear from the parking? Not something I wanted to find by testing empirically. But luckily you can take close enough shots by just climbing up and over the hill from the end loop of the parking lot. Ueda, check! Ponta de São Lourenço is one of the sunnier and drier parts of the island so it’s very popular all year with hikers and sightseers! Parking can be tight, but like many of the hiking trailheads, the island’s trailhead bus system can get you there.
Finishing up
And with that, four planets on one island in two days: Khofar, Olega, Ueda, and the Unknown Planet. It’s pretty amazing that so many of these filming sites are easily accessed Madeira tourist locations. Other than the abandoned terraces of rural Poço das Casas, these places had plenty of visitors. Even harder-to-reach Calhau da Forna do Bode had a couple of intrepid hikers. There was one remaining spot that we weren’t able to reach. It was a dirt road in the mountains near the junction of ER105 & ER228 near Lombo do Moliero, where they filmed the mountains that would be in one shot for the Eclipse II’s landing approach to Khofar for the fourth episode. Hugo said that the road in the area was closed at the time, so it was off the itinerary. Are there other unknown filming spots? Most likely! After all, there is another establishing shot of Khofar with a valley and a huge flat-topped forest. While such a forest might not exactly exist on Madeira at that scale without the assistance of a computer, it certainly fits.
With Madeira’s diverse ecosystems, there’s still a variety of landscapes that could become whole new worlds for Star Wars, should they decide to return there, and for the traveler like me, a chance to visit Star Wars in paradise. Overall, the trip was well worth it, both as a chance to explore the place that brought four different planets to life in Star Wars: The Acolyte and as a much-needed vacation for this author. So if you’re trapped in the winter cold, take a trip to Madeira and have a dip in the Stranger’s pool! While the landscapes on Madeira are out of this world, getting there and enjoying your stay is easy. Just if you’re planning on hitting up Fanal forest or Pico do Areeiro in the winter months, keep an eye on the weather, and have a bright yellow raincoat!
Author’s note: The Madeira Promotion Bureau (website: www.visitmadeira.com) organized and paid for the two-day personal tour of the Star Wars filming locations.