Madeira and Tenerife

Saturday, January 14, 2012

Yesterday, we sailed into the harbor of Funchal, on the island of Madeira. In a word: flowers. Everywhere - growing out of rocks on the escarpment, in flower boxes along the main roads, in an award-winning garden in the middle of town. Seemingly happy and extremely friendly people. Clean streets but a strange practice in the cathedral (Se). I always light a candle for my sons in every cathedral I pass, no matter where I am. Here, however, I paid a woman in the vestry and she explained, in Portuguese, which I,of course, do not understand, that she would put the candle in the cathedral for me. OK, new lands, new cultures.

Although I have always sworn that I could never live anywhere without cold winters, I will make an exception in the case of Madeira.

The original PRIDE OF BALTIMORE sank with the loss of 2 lives.  When we lived in Maryland we contributed to the building of the PRIDE OF BALTIMORE II.  She is beautiful!

Flowers everywhere.

What looks like an "eggplant/aubergine" tree!?!

Tiles on many buildings

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The entrance to the Internal Revenue office - wow!

The cathedral

Many sidewalks have mosaic patterns

Can you see the rainbow?

Leaving Madeira

 However, as with much of Europe, Madeira is experiencing a drought and there was a forest fire which forced some of the people from the ship (35 of them) on a tour to take a detour, almost missing the sailing time. They made it with about 7 minutes to spare. Considering the fees charged for the docking space at the harbor, it could get expensive waiting for late passengers.

Tenerife,on the other hand, was not difficult to leave. Too many tourist traps, hustlers and really dirty streets. I got an adapter (European plug to UK plug), mailed some letters and walked back to the ship, only 4 hours on land, 3 too many.

But, at this point, a back-track is in order.

From 12 - 18 December, the North Atlantic ocean experienced hurricane-like conditions which buffeted even this vessel. The Queen Mary 2 is approximately as long as the Empire State Building is tall, with 150,000 hp (eat your heart out, BMW!) but there were waves as high as the 10th deck (30+ ft. / 10+ m). I was in the beauty shop on deck 8 when a wave slapped into the window, sending shampoo bottles flying and my chair skating backwards. The Captain sailed further south to try and avoid the brunt of the storm but it followed us. I found it tremendously exciting, was never frightened but mildly annoyed when the planetarium shows were canceled, or shock-horror, the dancing classes were canceled. That was when I decided to try for a cabin going to the Caribbean - a wise decision on my part.

My favorite islands were St Thomas, Barbados, St Lucia and St Maarten/St Martin. I did not like Grenada at all and wonder what, if any, effect the American invasion had. It did not seem to help. The people seemed not only poor economically but also poor in spirit. Very sad.

For the women reading this: every day was a BAD HAIR day so after 3 days I just stopped worrying about it, went off into the humidity secure in the knowledge that my hot comb was waiting back in my cabin.

Now, on the way to Namibia and the southern stars, we will have 6 or 7 days at sea - the main reason for this trip and I will catch up on my wave-watching, letter writing and line dancing.