The Magic of Madeira, Portugal

Portugal

DAY 104 – Tuesday, April 19, 2011 – Can you picture perfection in Portugal?  We actually experienced it!

Madeira is an autonomous Portuguese island located hundreds of miles southeast of mainland Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean.  Soaring cliffs, clear blue water, stunning mountains and deep canyons, beautiful flowers and vast vineyards beckon all to its shores. 

The island is only 35 miles long and 13 miles wide at its widest point.  Madeira’s eternally spring climate and volcanic soils are a wondrous combination of sun and rich nutrient soil to produce thousands of varieties of flowers, trees, and lush vineyards for the production of world-renowned sherry wines used for both drinking and cooking.  The island is warmed by Atlantic currents in winter and cooled by trade winds in summer.

Madeira, Portugal is the perfect port to wrap up our amazing world journey.  It has a beautiful bay, gorgeous city buildings and homes, botanical wonders, cable cars high in the sky, and an abundance of Madeira wine tasting cellars.   What more could anyone ask for?

Approaching Madeira we were amazed at the zigzag roadways that worked their way up the mountainsides and valleys where the sparkle of thousands of street lights looked like Christmas tree garlands at night.

  Madeira is obviously a vacationers’ paradise – it is small and  peaceful.  Many yachts and villas crowd the harbor to serve world travelers, especially the more affluent Europeans looking for a quiet, gorgeous getaway location.

The streets of Madeira at the harbor level are picturesque promenades with decorative mosaic tiles everywhere.

Everything was in bloom wherever you looked…truly eternal spring.

Huge tall bridges found between the deep valleys connect to hillside dwellings all over the island.

The tall green tower supports cable cars that travel from the top of one mountain to connect with the city center below in the harbor.

Suspended in the air for a dramatic 20-minute ride to a botanical garden gave us a magnificent view of the entire harbor area.

You can just barely spot a long roadway bridge and our docked cruise ship way down in the harbor from this cable car view.

Another unique way to get down to the city is with wicker sleighs – baskets for two with sled runners under them that are controlled by two very strong men in white uniforms.  The men hold on to ropes attached to the sleigh, using their well-developed muscles as brakes on these roadways that slide straight down the extreme slopes!

What a treat!  We visited the flower, fruit, vegetables and fish market to get a feel for the enormous variety of products that Madeira produces daily.  We saw many colorful and unusual things we had never seen before.

Talk about beautiful…

And unusual…flowers

Don’t ask…we could not find out the name of these long, thin black fish that looked something like eels with fish heads…there were hundreds coming in to the fish market from the fishermen while we were there.

Once we departed the sky tram at the botanical gardens, we were enthralled with the big size and variety of beautifully maintained plants everywhere…

Bird of Paradise grows like weeds in the botanical gardens’ fertile soil.

Year-round plants have been cultivated in all types of designs throughout the gardens.

And every conceivable color of orchid burst out to be admired along all of the gardens’ walkways.

One last photo stop from the botanical gardens before we head down to the port.

Our timing was perfect…the mornings in Madeira are bright and sunny, then in the early afternoon the gift of misty moisture starts to drift down into the valleys to nourish all of the mountainside flowers, fruits, vegetables, and vineyards.

Speaking of vineyards, our final land excursion took us to a fabulous sherry wine tasting lodge where we learned the difference between sweet, medium sweet,  and sweeter sherry!

And as we head out into the great Atlantic from Madeira island, we bid farewell with three loud blasts from our ship’s horns as the final harbor pilot jumps off of our cruise ship and wishes us safe travels to our final destination, Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

By the time we reach our starting point in Florida, now six days away, we will have traveled more than 32,000 nautical miles on the seas of the world, plus many more miles trekking on land around some of the globe’s most wondrous places.  This has truly been the voyage of a lifetime!