Porto Santo

Take Off
Jörgen Wennberg
Fri 24 Oct 2014 13:12
Morningdip with the kids

   

We took a taxiguide all morning, Luis, who drove us around Porto Santo. We were astonished by his English that he had learned at school in Porto Santo. Nearly everyone we met in Porto Santo spoke at least English, French or German. Porto Santo has a population of about 5 000 people and at least one foreign language is compulsary at school from the first year. The teachers teaching the language are either from England, France o Germany and all the movies on TV are subtitled. Something for the rest of the Southern European countries to pick up… 

Porto Santo is the little sister of Madeira with a tourism that is unfortunately declining every year although they have all the opportunities to make the island really attractive. They have a fully equipped airport (built by NATO during the cold war for the Americans to have a base in the Atlantic), golf, horse riding, scuba diving, hiking, beach, warm and sunny weather, only 1 hour difference from the rest of Europe and even whale watching. But the big hotels close for the ”winter” from october to april. Madeira and Portugal have implied high airport taxes making it too expensive for flights and tour operators to run business during the whole year. A pity, Porto Santo is beautiful and has all the opportunities to be a good winter charter destination.

               

Along side the harbour a few yachts from all over the world have painted their ”tags” as souvenir of their passage.