Funchal, Madeira and Six Straight Days at Sea

Our last stop before starting our Trans-Atlantic crossing was Funchal on Madeira Island in Portugal which is one of the islands in the Portugese Archepological Islands.  Madeira means “wood” and was discovered in 1419.  Funchal is a beautiful city that sits at the base of a mountain that is 1862 feet high, tallest on th island.  Our guide was Rubina (Ruby), pronounced Hubina since the Portugese do not pronounce their R’s as “R”.  We boarded our tour bus for a short drive to the Cable Car Station and then took the cable car up to the top of the mountain.  The view was spectacular as you can imagine.  Funchal has a population of 120,000 and the total population of Madeira is 250,000 people.  Madiera is known for its linens and rabbits which can only be hunted on Saturdays and holidays with a 5 rabbit per day limit.  The famous Soccer player, Ronaldo, is from the Island.

At the top of the mountain we climbed into basket tobagens which are made out of cooked brown Willow, taking 3 hours to cook the wood which is white in its natural state.  The tobagen is guided by two men standing on the back end of  the skiis behind the basket who control both the speed and direction of the basket.  They are dressed in traditional dark blue and white horizontal striped shirt and Portugese straw hats with ribbons that say, “Madeira”.  The ride was great though a little tense when the tobagen goes into a sideways slide in the road curves and comes close at times to colliding with the tobagen in front of ours.  At the bottem of the run, still about half way up the mountain are souvenir vendors.  At a lower view point are vendors who primarily show embroidered linens but unfortunately for them and fortunately for me, they didn’t take credit cards and we didn’t have enough Euros on us to consummate a deal, so we said, “Abrogado (thanks but no thanks) and got back on the tour bus back to the downtown area.  Being Sunday, most of the shops were closed although I did find a souvenir shop so we could buy a shirt, hat and postcards.  We also went to a beautiful wine bar to taste the Madeira wine and we found a wonderful restaurant where we could sit on the patio under an umbrella and have a very tasty lunch which included Black Scabbard (the favorite fish of the area and a delicious white meat) together with a fried banana and vegetables.  One of the vegetables which was particularly tasty is called Pearclipper that grows on a vine and has spikes on it which are removed before cooking (steaming).  The fish was in a Passion fruit sauce. . . um, um good!!  The pearclipper is not a cactus fruit and only grows in tropical climates.

The cruise has been great fun and very smooth except for one and a half days where there was some rocking action but we didn’t have to take anything for sea sickness.  The food has been great.  We have met a number of very nice and interesting people including two couples from L.A. who know some of my high school friends including Dick Fass, Stan and Fran Schill’s brother in law.

The big news is that after 6 days of bridge lessons in the mornings and 6 days of playing duplicate bridge in the afternoons without great success, when the chips were on the line with prizes being offered today (the last day of duplicate bridge on the ship) we took first place for East – West out of eleven tables and won Holland American “Dam Ship” sweatshirts.

Tomorrow we will be at Half Moon Cay, Bahamas, an island owned by Holland America where we are going to ride jet skiis.  We arrive in Fort Lauderdale on Monday morning.  We will be in Florida for four days and then Chicago for five days before returning home on the 10th.

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