January in Madeira

Olivia and Tony have been in Madeira together since January 7^th, living aboard Amoret but doing land-based stuff including walks, a week’s tourism with a hire car, the spectacular bus ride to Fuchal and the usual eating and drinking.

At present we are the only liveaboard residents in Marina Quinta do Lorde (views from café showing Amoret below), though the previous week was enlivened by the arrival of a yacht called Malaika. No, this was not the Rear-Commodore of Port Solent YC making a bid for freedom, but a different Malaika, 77 ft long with an evidently well-off owner and a South African couple as crew, Simon and Terrie. We had a couple of pleasant evenings with them when the skipper and his guests were ashore, including giving them an on-board roast chicken dinner to help them recover from cooking a goose from frozen for owner and guests on the previous night.

Funchal is interesting with a very attractive old quarter and a fair number of museums – we plan to spend a couple of nights ashore there towards the end of this week. Here’s a view across the harbour towards the crowded and rather unattractive marina.

The other marina in Madeira is at Calheta, some considerable way west of Funchal. I had considered staying there but gathered from a contact in Lagos that it can be very nasty if the scend gets in through the entrance – the visitors’ berths are equipped with haul-off buoys so that the boat can be pulled away from contact with the pontoon if necessary. Also there is no gas  available locally and it doesn’t offer the substantial discount that I am getting for being an Ocean Cruising Club member. Having said that, Calheta has the advantages of having a couple of cafes and a supermarket. The photo shows the view from the west wall.

While we had a car we stopped at several towns on the steep and impressive north coast. Santana was interesting for its “triangular houses”, which provided basic indoor accommodation when rain interrupted the normal outdoor life of the inhabitants. There are still about a hundred of these, though the two in the picture have been tarted up quite tastefully for us tourists. While there we were serenaded by undoubtedly the worst one-man band on the planet, who obviously worked on the business plan that people would pay him to go away.

Although usually the sunnier side of the island, the south gets rain when the westerlies come in. On such a day we escaped across the island to Porto da Cruz, where it was sunny and sheltered and we could admire the surf breaking then retire for refreshment.

Apart from trivial outings on foot, we have done several “proper” walks so far. These include the East and West sections of the Caniçal levada with lovely days for both of them (no pictures of these as they feature in my pre-Christmas blogs). Possibly the high point of the western walk was when Liv drew my attention to some birdsong coming from a small reed bed. It was clearly a reed warbler, but which? The songs of the European and the Great reed warbler are hard to distinguish. We failed to get a sighting, which was slightly irritating as both birds have only been recorded five times in Madeira. Each of these walks ended with refreshment at a “tipico” – a small bar that also offers modest-priced but good and plentiful food. One had three dishes that we tasted before making a choice. I thought that I was pretty immune to chilli, but one taste of their dried cod-based bacalhau com piripiri left my lips feeling blistered for an hour. We settled for the tasty but non-incendiary squid and octopus options. The other great little walk started from Ribiero Frio – a tiny village high in the mountains – following a steep flight of steps from our lunch cafe then a broad and easy path along a levada to Balcões – a ledge protected by railings with a stunning view down the valley. This walk is known as a good place to spot two of the three Madeira-only species of birds (Trocaz pigeon and Madeiran firecrest). We didn’t see either but were compensated by the chaffinches (Madeiran subspecies) that scrounged crumbs at the viewpoint.

We have now hit a spell of windy weather so are sitting it out with adequate supplies of food and wine until we get the bus for our extended visit to Funchal on Thursday.