Madeira
Sarah Grace goes to sea
Chris Yerbury and Sophy White
Sun 2 Oct 2005 21:49
Maderia, 2nd
October
This is a truly amazing
island. It changes from desert to ancient foggy forest, to terraced
tropical fruit groves all within the space of half an hour. A head for
heights helps, as it rises so steeply from the sea. We are all exausted
from two days of charging around on levanter walks, where we walk along the
irrigation streams cut into the side of cliffs, and mountain hikes, where you
wobble along the crests of mountains. We have also swum off a
boulder beach in the surf, which calls for a good sense of timing getting in and
out of the sea, and been to an adventure water park, with massive
slides.
We have been travelling in
convoy with Regina crew and Koshlong crew, all in identical hirecars, with seven
children and six adults in toto. It has felt like the Italian job at
times, with cliffs galore everywhere.
We have been buying lovely
food from roadside farm shops, lots of fruits which we haven't seen before, all
really fresh.
ps. my washing did blow
off, but was visible on the bottom, and Chris and Otti fished it out with a
fishing rod the next day.