A girl walks into a bar. I am the girl and this is the bar.
The bar is on Madeira and is crawling with carreiros, the island's white-clad, straw-hatted, dry-land-based answer to the gondoliers of Venice—minus the crooning, but I never liked That's Amore anyhow. They are the kings of the mountain who push people down the very steep hill from the town of Monte to the capital of Funchal in their basket cars. Once a functional means of transportation, it is now essentially a thrill ride for paying tourists, one of whom I plan to be after checking out the Nossa Senhora church and stopping to smell the flowers in some botanical gardens.
Inside the bar, I realize that I hadn't realized it would be full of carreiros and only carreiros, though it was right around the corner from their launch pad. I'm the only foreigner, and only female. By a long shot. But I'm inside, I've committed and I'm thirsty. I hope they notice that I’ve a sweater around my shoulders, after having just stepped out of the church. See, I am pious, I respect your customs. I get it. I'm no visiting hussy trying to bag some local dick for the five days I will be in the place you call home forever. The swirling Portuguese drops off. Heads turn. The sea of men parts.
Me to the bartender: “Por favor, um cappuccino e água sem gás.”
Fútbol blares on the T.V. over my left shoulder. Attentions are gradually pulled back to companions and card games. Still feeling awkward, I attempt some small talk asking the bartender (in English as I've pretty much exhausted all my Portuguese with that one line) “so, do you serve them Madeira while they’re waiting for customers?” Madeira is both the name of the island and of the local wine I am actually here to write about. Nope, nothing. I’ve thoroughly confused him.
“Toilet?” He asks, hopeful.
I add some charades-style moves to my second attempt at the question, pointing at the wine bottles lining the shelves behind him, pointing at the carreiros, and then pretending to sip from a phantom glass. This is read by a small carreiro puffing a ciggy a few feet away at the end of the bar, who's been side-eyeing me since arrival. He gets what I'm asking—Do they drink wine on the job?—and translates to the bartender. Both men emphatically shake their heads no, no, no. Of course not, I think to myself, they're "driving" after all.
Nerves tend to give me blinders like a horse, so it's only when I turn to leave a few minutes later that I notice a hefty percentage of the men are not, just as the bartender said, drinking wine. Instead they're swigging Coral, Madeira's local beer. Needless to say, I opt to take the funicular down.
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