Our friend Joao called Madeira and Azores distant cousins. Indeed the atmosphere could not be more different despite "only" 500 miles that separate the two archipelagos. And yes, like (presumably) most people, I was ignorant about the fact that there are other islands surrounding Madeira, which is why technically it is an archipelago: there is Porto Santo to the northeast, Desert Islands to the southeast. The Portuguese also claim that Selvagens way to the south are part of the archipelago, but given their proximity to the Canary Islands... I will let the Spanish and Portuguese figure it out.
Just like on the Azores, there are few places where one can leave the boat. It seemed most convenient to stay at Quinta do Lorde marina way on the east, but it had one big disadvantage as far as exploring the island is concerned: it is WAY out on the eastern side of the island. Irina arrived a day before us and rented a car. For the next few days it felt like we were commuting for vacation. I don't know how many kilometers we've driven, but it was a bit annoying to have to drive all the way back to this secluded resort where the marina is, to be greeted by guards who were receptive to "barca na marina" to let us park 50 meters from where Salty Ginger was tied up.
The central group of the Azores islands (Pico, Faial, Sao Jorge, Graciosa, Terceira) are very sparsely populated. Kind of wild if still civilized. Ponta Delgada on Sao Miguel almost feels like a city. Funchal has a feel of a megapolis even if its population is only 100k people. It is kind of dense and yet, due to the steep slope of the mountain, totally spread out and distances that look short on the map might require a 15 minute drive or more to cover due to the winding roads. An it's not like the streets are shy on steepness: we've seen 15% grade just out of the city and more than 20% well outside.
Hiking
One of my wishes for the island was to discover its inner parts by foot. The local government is trying to control the number of people on the trails by restricting the passes that one has to buy to be legally allowed to walk. Indeed, on the trail a stone throw from Quinta do Lorde, there were guys scanning tickets, so we had to satisfy our appetite by going to a peak from which we could see Porto Santo and Ilhas Desertas. Honestly, I think we saw the most interesting parts (I say because we rounded the tip by boat).
At the top we saw a bunch of lizards running around, and a few of them (I'm not kidding) were trying to check out Peter's pocket.
25 Fontes
Another hike that we did register for was route 6.1 because route 6 was overbooked. Indeed, there were a lot of cars parked in the local style on the approach to the parking lot. By "local style" I deduce that so long as people can reasonably drive around my car, I can park there. Guess what, there was nobody to check our passes, and since the sold out trail seemed to be the more coveted one, we took it instead of the one that we booked.
To give credit where it's due: the scenery is wonderful, the smell of the forest, the contrast to Funchal (10C colder). I still think that Sete Cidades on Sao Miguel is much more impressive, as is the 10 volcano walk on Faial, even if I have only been to its western end. Not to say that I would discourage anyone from coming to Madeira to hike! It's lovely.
Botanical Garden
The garden is green and worth visiting. The plants from Macaronesia are mixed with plants from all over the subtropical regions of the world.
There are a few ways to get to the garden. Walking was not in our stars. Taking the cable car looked interesting, but we missed a turn having picked up our friend Quesquella on the way and Google Maps made us believe that we could go one street up to grab lunch at the restaurant before looking at the garden. The app was absolutely wrong. We took a short walk and found ourselves separated by a short fence from the garden cafe. Given the choice between another random walk through the steep streets and jumping the fence, we took the latter. We're on Madeira as opposed to Singapore, so nobody would arrest us...
Ba-na-na-na
Apparently, it's Beethoven's favorite fruit (you have to annunciate the sub-title accordingly). Our luck was to be on the island during the Banana Festival. Indeed, the island is a producer and exporter of bananas. And they are tasty. Banana weiss beer, cheese with banana, banana milk shake, banana "juice".
The only partly disappointing part of the festival was the music. There was a small band with brass instruments, saxes & percussion who sounded great, but they would repeat the verse of a song 15 times before wrapping it up. And then there was the "official" festival band whose voices left something to be desired. We were told that every week there is a festival, be it salt, fish or whatever other edibles, it's worth celebrating!
On our way "home" we had dinner at a restaurant overlooking the ocean to the south and the sunset to the west, called 90 degrees. As Irina pointed out, we did have the moon 90 degrees in relation to the sun!
Porto Santo
We were rather skeptical about the description in the sailing guide: "superb beach, the equal of anything the Caribbean has to offer", but there was only one way to find that out for ourselves. I was overly optimistic about the time needed to get there: instead of a 5 hour sail, we ended up taking 7 and were forced to motor the last 6 miles to be able to make it for dinner.
For a change we decided to stay at anchor. Our first attempt was cautiously shot down by the Dutch neighbor who said that we are probably too close since the wind and currents do weird thing. We decided not to test the fate and moved. The new German neighbor did not object. Indeed, curious things were happening: at some point their boat and Salty Ginger were at a right angle and became more or less aligned after a couple of minutes. I am pretty sure that in the distance I saw a boat whose stern was pointing towards ours. And it's not like the conditions were windless.
Since were hungry, we tried to get to the town as quickly as possible. Walking 40 minutes did not look appealing, but all cab companies were too busy. Just as we were about to give up, we noticed an elderly man getting ready to drive away. We asked him if he could give us a lift towards the town. He looked at us suspiciously and took us, refusing to take 5 euros that we offered at the end of a 5 minute ride.
We came to a beach side restaurant, where we had a pleasant meal with friendly service, and then we went to explore the beach. On the way to the restaurant, the beach itself was hidden by dunes with not-so-friendly looking vegetation, but once we were on the fine sand, we had to agree with the cruising guide description. We ended up walking along the water back to the marina.
The following day we had planned a kayak tour. The guide, a computer science high school teacher, got the 8 double-kayaks organized. Peter was the "odd" person and ended up being with Antonio. We explored a few seaside caves and went to a little cove for a swim. What a lovely tour!
Getting ready for departure
In the past week it has been blowing solid 20 knots in the waters between Madeira and Africa. As of Monday the forecast is for the wind to drop down to 10 knots and maybe down to 5 knots in another few days, so we seem to be getting a decent weather window to reach the African coast. Thus Sunday was a project day: laundry, getting food, washing the boat, diesel maintenance, etc. The engine desperately needed love as I discovered when I was replacing the fuel filters: the amount of water inside was troubling.
In the late afternoon we went to the little beach next to the resort. To our delight snorkeling was quite good! It's not quite the same as the reefs in the Egypt or the Caribbean, but there is more than enough marine life diversity to keep one entertained.
This time around, we have a rather inexperienced crew: Peter, my cousin Anton and his 11-year old son Leo and myself. The plan is to have Peter & Anton on shift until midnight and then I will take the rest of the night. We're still not sure if Bouregreg marina in Rabat will take us, even if they sounded quite friendly on the phone. I'm hoping for the typical "not possible" switching to "maybe" to "you can stay on that spot". We'll have to figure something out when we get to the continent.
We had a great time on the Portuguese islands and I highly recommend exploring them: good food, friendly people and very pleasant summer!
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