As fans wait in line to get their pictures taken with a statue of Cristiano Ronaldo, the statue towers over the crowd. One young man with a leather bag slung over his shoulder waits with excitement. I’m on the roof of the Pestana CR7 hotel in Funchal, Madeira, and I’m watching.

This CR7 is more like a tour through the mind of a narcissist than a hotel. Ronaldo is in many places. On the walls are signed clothes from when he played for Manchester United, Real Madrid, and Portugal. Ronaldo’s face is on the front of the building, in the bathrooms, on the door of the main bedroom, and above each bed. After all, this is Ronaldo Island. Even the airport has his name on it.

There are fake CCTV cameras in the bathrooms that look at the shower for no reason other than to be funny. I put a towel over mine just in case. Lucky for me, I’m not just here for the CR7 experience. I’m going to see my uncle in Machico, which is the old capital of Madeira and is a half-hour drive from Funchal. If you do come here, get out of the city and go exploring after you’ve worshiped the Portuguese megastar, seen Funchal, and dared the glass viewing platform on Cabo Giro’s skywalk.

Pete is our tour guide for the week, and we head out in a rickety old Renault Clio with his 15-year-old staffy, Lulu. The car huffs and puffs up the island’s steep roads, through long mountain tunnels, and along winding, dusty dirt tracks.

I see a bottlenose dolphin jump out of the water, and then all of a sυdden there are dozens of them all around us. Madeira is on a volcano that has stopped erupting, and the rich soils have made it a very green place. We drive by rows of trees with beautiful landscaping, including African tulips with bright red, flappy flowers and tall eucalyptus trees with groups of purple bushes and palm trees in between.

“You see how it looks like the mountain has steps?” Pete says as he points to the uneven slopes on the mountains. “It’s a farm.” People there have to farm vertically because of the way the land is set up. They mostly grow bananas for the Portuguese mainland and grapes for madeira wine. Off the road, there are a lot of trails, caves, beaches, and taverns to discover. Outside of Funchal, everything is cheap. It’s a great deal, in fαct. Parts of the island have pints for a couple of euros, and almost every bar offers drinks with a big plate of pickled lupins beans, monkey nuts, and sometimes chicken wings and salted fish. You could probably eat here for a day for the price of a pint in the West End of London.