Level 1On foot · first trip
Visitor
What you can do on foot on a first trip, with no planning at all. Order it, walk it, taste it.
The mechanics, in full
How the Halflocal passport works.
Halflocal is one passport, stamped for the places you get to know instead of the ones you pass through. Two halves below: how a passport works anywhere, naming no place at all, then Madeira, where every real number and stamp lives.
Skip to how a passport works or to Madeira.
PassportMadeira · as designed
Madeira
Visitor
14 of 35 stamps · 12 from Explorer
40%
Recent
Poncha
×7
Drink a poncha
Tue
Tangerine again. Venda Velha, the stool by the door.
Whales
Whale watching
22 Aug
Pilot whales, twenty of them, off Calheta.
Ruivo
Arieiro to Ruivo
19 Aug
Above the clouds by seven. Knees still sore.
Next up · Explorer
An arraial
Arraial
A page from your passport, as designed. The app opens after Madeira's list is finished.
Part oneHow a passport works
Four levels, anywhere you go.
A level says how you get in: how much time, planning, money or luck a thing takes, never how hard it is. The four never change. What changes is the list inside them, written by somebody who lives wherever you've landed.
Level 2A day out · planned
Explorer
The rest of the place. A bus or a car, a day planned around it, and sometimes something booked ahead.
Level 3Permits · specific dates
Regular
Specific dates, permits, and a fair bit of luck. Most visitors never get here. That's rather the point.
Level 4Someone takes you
Half-local
The things you only do if someone who lives there brings you. No booking page, no ticket. You have to know a person.
You tap it, nobody checks
A stamp is you saying you did it. There's no receipt to upload and no location to share. It's your record, not a scoreboard, so the only person you could cheat is yourself.
Finish a level, take its name
A title is the deepest level you've finished, and each one contains the ones below it. That's the whole rule. You start a Tourist, which asks for nothing.
The summit is Half-local
The honest end of the ladder, and the most anyone is ever told they have become. Nobody is a local. And the last level never asks for all of its stamps, because every destination keeps a few things almost nobody reaches. A summit nobody can stand on is decoration, not a goal.
What's left is the next trip
The stamps you haven't earned are your itinerary for going back. The unfinished list is the reason to return, which is the whole of why the list is short and somebody local wrote it.
One passport
A page for every place you go.
One book, many pages
You get one passport, not one per country. Each destination adds a page of stamps and the same four levels, with its own list inside them.
That's the whole system
The rest of this page is Madeira, with real numbers in it. If you've read enough, leave an address instead.
Part twoMadeira · destination 001
What that looks like on one island.
Go whale watching. Order the poncha. Walk the levada. That's Madeira's list, and the numbers below are Madeira's too. Every destination sets its own.
TitleWhat it takes
Tourist
What everyone is before the first level is finished. It asks for nothing.
Visitor9 stamps
all 9 Visitor
Explorer25 stamps
all 9 Visitorall 16 Explorer
Regular30 stamps
all 9 Visitorall 16 Explorerall 5 Regular
Half-local33 stamps
all 9 Visitorall 16 Explorerall 5 Regular3 of 4 Half-local
The bars are drawn to one scale, so a longer bar is a longer climb, and each contains the one above it. Arrival sits outside all of it: 35 slots on this page, 34 of which decide a title. Madeira's whole list, stamp by stamp.
Also in there
One stamp is given. Some are earned twice.
Madeira
The one that is given
Madeira's Arrival stamp, dated the day you land. It's the only stamp nobody earns.
Repeat check-in
Poncha ×7, a favourite
Seven of them, read together, are a small history of you and one drink on one island. That's the part a checklist never keeps.
Before you ask
Four things this page hasn't said.
- Do I have to install anything?
- No. It opens in whatever browser you already have. There's no app store, no download, and nothing to update while you're away.
- Do I need an account?
- Not to start one. Tick what you've done and you can save it with an email address. You only pick a name and a password if you come back through that email to keep it.
- I've already been to Madeira.
- Then start there. It asks how many times you've been, stamps Arrival once for each, and lets you tick everything you've already done, including the things you've done more than once. Create your passport.
- Who writes the list?
- One person who lives there. Not a vote and not a top ten, which is the whole reason the list is short. How the list gets written.
Still here
Then you're the sort of person this is for.
Been to Madeira before? Tick what you've done and see where you land. Create your passport.