FLOODING IN MADEIRA - FEBRUARY 2010

Yesterday I wrote about our visit to the beautiful Portuguese island of Madeira. Now the island is experiencing heavy flooding. As of today 32 people have been killed as a result of this flooding.....

OUR TRANSATLANTIC CRUISE - Day 7 - Madeira

Just in case you're wondering what happened to day six of our cruise, it was a day at sea between our stop in Cartagena Spain and our last stop before heading out to sea.  Our last stop was the beautiful island of Madeira, Portugal.  The day at sea also allowed us to 'fall back' one hour so that when we arrived in Madeira we'd be synchronized with their time.

I wrote a little about the history of Madeira and about our plans for the day HERE in case you'd like to go back and read that post. 
 
Coming into Madeira was beautiful.  The city climbed up the hillside. and although the mountains were coverby by clouds at least it wasn't raining. Because Madeira is an island we hoped there was a good chance that it would be windy enough to blow those clouds away.

Although I wasn't dedicated enough to get up for all the really early arrivals, I did enjoyed watching the docking process when we arrived at a more civilized hour. I could tell as we approached the dock that the walk into town would be longer than it was in Cartagena, but for us that wouldn't matter: our minibus would be picking us up right at the ship to take us on our 4-5 hour tour of the island.

After posting on the CruiseCritic.com message board we'd ended up with 15 people in our group, enough to fill one large minivan. As it turned out, the minivan we were supposed to use needed some repairs, so the company substituted 2 smaller vans, which was really better. It also allowed a woman we'd met on the ship to join our group.

We knew that the first stop on our tour would be a cable car ride up into the clouds. We had a great view of our ship in the harbor, as well as views of the houses and surrounding land. As we would see throughout our tour, almost every available space was planted with something: a personal vegetable garden, vineyards, fields of sugar cane, banana trees, and flowers everywhere, even in December. This must be an amazing place in the spring when everything is in bloom!



As we continued our tour and saw how steep and winding the roads were we knew for sure that we'd made the right decision to book a tour. If we'd opted to walk into town all we would have seen would have been the shops, not the beautiful countryside.

When we came to the point in the tour where people could opt to ride the famous basket sleds down the hill no one in our van was interested. As it turned out the line for the sleds was so backed up that it wouldn't have been practical anyway.

We drove up up up to an altitude of over 3000 feet for some incredible views. Although the clouds still clung to the mountaintops it didn't rain. Sunshine and blue skies would have been nice, but even a cloudy day can't diminish these views!

We were able to taste (and buy!) some Madeira wine at a small wine shop. There was no pressure to buy, and everyone was happy to answer our questions and offer samples. We ended up buying both the sweet dessert Madeira and the dry version, as well as a few liquers.

Our stop at the small fishing village of Câmara De Lobos let us get up close and personal with fish drying in the sun!  We see dried, salted cod in Italy, and I guess everywhere fishing in important the fish are dried for use during the winter months, just as they have been for centuries.  This man, who was anxious to practice his English, told us that this fish was "too much good!"

Everywhere we stopped on our tour the views were spectacular and once again I'll just let the photos speak for themselves. Remember, you can click on the icon in the bottom right hand corner of the slideshow to make the photos full screen. If you ever have the chance to visit Madeira, go, and definitely take a tour to see as much of the island as you can.



There are more photos from the cruise and all the ports we visited on our FLICKR PAGE.

CRUISING - Day 6 - MADEIRA PORTUGAL

Today we're stopping at the Portuguese island of Madeira, at the city of Funchal. Because it's Sunday none of the wine factories will be open for tours, but I'm sure it'll be possible to buy a bottle or two of Madeira's famous wine somewhere along the way. To be honest, I knew the name of the wine, but not much else. Here's some history: Madeira is a fortified Portuguese wine made in the Madeira Islands. The wine is produced in a variety of styles ranging from dry wines which can be consumed on their own as an aperitif, to sweet wines more usually consumed with dessert. Cheaper versions are often flavored with salt and pepper for use in cooking!

The islands of Madeira have a long winemaking history dating back to the Age of Exploration when Madeira was a standard port of call for ships heading to the New World or East Indies. To prevent the wine from spoiling, neutral grape spirits were added. On the long sea voyages, the wines would be exposed to excessive heat and movement which transformed the flavor of the wine as the wine producers of Madeira found out when an unsold shipment of wine returned to the islands after a round trip.

Today, Madeira is noted for its unique winemaking process which involves heating the wine up to temperatures as high as 140°F for an extended period of time and deliberately exposing the wine to some levels of oxidation. Due to this unique process, Madeira is a very robust wine that can be quite long lived even after being opened.

When doing research for this port it quickly became apparent that the sights weren't as easily accessible as most of the other ports. We'd need to have some way to get around the island to best appreciate it's many vistas. Rather than book one of the cruise line's tours, I once again turned to the CruiseCritic.com message board, where I discovered that many people there also booked private tours.  I contacted one of the companies recommended by others, and also posted that I was looking for other people to share the tour.  Eventually we ended up with a group of 14 people, and we'll take our tour with Daniel Madeira Taxis.  Our 4 ½ hour tour will begin when we're met on the dock, then we'll tour the island as described here: 

• If you're interested in taking the Cable Car up to Monte, the driver will take you, first, to the Cable Car station in town, for your ride up. In case some of the people in your group are not interested in doing the Cable Car ride, they will go to Monte in the van.
• Once you reach Monte the driver will meet you again and, if you're interested, will show you the way to the Toboggan ride. Here again, those not interested in doing the ride, will continue in the van. The Toboggan ride is a 2km downhill run in a wicker basket, controlled by two men.
• Next, Pico dos Barcelos, where you'll admire Funchal and all the suburbs.
• Curral das Freiras, the center of the vulcano that was in the origin of Madeira, an impressive sight.
• Câmara De Lobos, interesting small fishing town.
• Cabo Girão, a beautiful sea cliff, is the highest in Europe and the second highest in the world.
• Madeira wine has been famous for many, many years. Wine Factories are closed on Sunday, alternatively you can have your wine tasting in a wine shop.
• At the end of the tour you'll be dropped off where it may be more convenient for you.

The funniest part of this tour is the toboggan ride.  I'd read that you went down the mountain in a wicker basket guided by two men, but I really wasn't sure what that meant.  Of course YouTube came to my rescue, so I'll let you see for yourself.  It certainly doesn't look like the most scenic route, and now I'm not so sure I'm that interested.