A writer’s birthday escape to Madeira blends island adventure with a lot of pampering

By Alan Behr Wilson Fernandes takes every tight turn, steep plunge and narrow miss of parked cars like the pro that he is, driving me in his Land Rover through the back roads of the island of Madeira. We are in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, 500 miles to 600 miles (800km to 1,000km) southwest of the Portuguese mainland, but the hill-studded landscape, challenging roads and the rotating patches of functional housing, opulent villas and open terrain remind me of Saint Barthelemy, far to our west, in...