Another Drive around Madeira
Ile Jeudi
Bob and Lin Griffiths
Mon 27 Aug 2012 16:53
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Wednesday 22 to Friday 24 August 2012
Hurricane Gordon has been tracking to the north of
us over the Azores to mainland Europe and has left a nasty sea so we
decided to stay a little longer in Madeira. After a couple of days in
the marina we decided to hire a car for 3 days to see inland a little
more.
We were to pick up the car at the airport at 3.30pm
and the marina courtesy bus driver took us all the way there, saving us a
lot of time. We looked at a couple of the small ports on the south coast
on the way back to the marina. In the evening we drove to nearby Canical
where Peter and Lorraine had told us about a plain, simple, but nice fish
restaurant. All we knew about Canical was what we could read in our pilot
book - basically that it was a commercial fishing port with not much to endear
itself. How wrong that is. It was a much nicer port than those we
had driven to today and the fish restaurant was really good. We were so
pleased that Peter and Lorraine recommended it.
On Thursday we drove along the south coast on the
'via rapida' to Calheta where there is the only other viable marina in
Madeira. Quite nice, better priced than where we are and it has a good
supermarket a few hundred yards from the marina. But, the town is a long
walk up a very steep hill and there is very little there once you get
there. As it is farther from Funchal than we are we are not convinced it
is much of an alternative even though it is cheaper.
We did spot a boat we recognised that had
visited Portimao marina briefly in about April this year and had then remained
in the nearby anchorage for a few weeks. We had seen them again
in May in Albufeira Marina where Robert and Cindy were celebrating their wedding
anniversary at a restaurant. They had left Annapolis last year and sailed
to the Azores, then on up to the UK and down across Biscay and to Lisbon.
Arriving in Portimao in the spring. This meant they spent the coldest
months of their trip in the UK! They are waiting a little longer in
Madeira for crew and then will sail on to the Canaries, Cape Verde islands and
then the Caribbean and US. It will be a quick Atlantic
circuit.
On Friday we intended to drive up into the
mountains but the cloud cover was very low, so as we were unlikely to see
anything, we abandoned that idea and drove around a bit of Funchal and then
visited the Botanical Gardens. We had missed the best time as most of the
flowering was over and done with but it was a pleasant way to spend a few
hours.
The 'mosaic' garden:-
 We did find a few flowers! A bird of
paradise:-
 Tha cactus garden:-
 The topiary section. Lin ready to
leave:-
 We came back via the supermarket in Machico and
loaded up with heavy stuff, milk, water etc and in the evening we drove back
into Machico and eat again at a restaurant we had tried soon after we reached
Madeira.
The sky was clear on Saturday morning so we drove
up into the hills and over to Porto da Cruz on the north east coast. It
was a long winding drive with some picturesque views again. Looking down
on Porto da Cruz:-
 We had lunch in Porto da Cruz on the sea front
where they have made a lido amingst the rocks to overcome the problem of trying
to access the sea over big pebbles and boulders:-
 We discovered a tunnel we could take to get back
and were stunned when we reached Machico in 10 minutes! No views but the
tunnels certainly open up the island. I
dropped Lin off at the Marina and took the car back to the airport for 4.30pm
and had a very easy bus ride back.
We think we will be able to leave for Isla Graciosa
on Monday so will spend tomorrow converting the boat from 'apartment mode' to
'sailing mode'. Basically putting things in places where they won't fall
over or roll about at sea amongst other things.
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