Cruise Day 15: Madeira, Portugal

Well...day 15 of our cruise(s) arrived and brought us to the last land that we would see for quite some time---the port of Funchal in Madeira, an island that is part of Portugal (despite being closer to the west coast of Morocco in Africa than it is to the mainland of Portugal).  Madeira is a lovely island with a very unique blend of very traditional rural and (in keeping with theme of most of Europe) mountainous lands as well as very urban and developed city area around the coastline.

I'll explain our magnet for the day just a bit.  Jason designed this magnet because one of the things he found (and once I saw it, I did too) fascinating about Madeira is its airport-----our magnet this day depicted the airport.  The airport is interesting because the runway is literally built up on a bridge! I am guessing that there wasn't enough long flat space to create a usable runway...so they built a runway that is set pretty high up on a fully supported bridge (like you see mickey's plane landing on in our magnet).  This phenomenon became even more interesting when, on the tour we took, we actually drove UNDER the airport runway...and saw that there are tennis courts (& maybe a pool, too??) built under there, as well....like a country club under the airport runway!!  Very odd...but cool!

So anyway...as we pulled into the port, this is the view of the coastline with which we were treated:

In Madeira we had booked a "port adventure" (otherwise known as a shore excursion).  Because most all of our trip through the Mediterranean with Adventures by Disney had been sight-seeing and of moderate activity level, we decided we wanted to book excursions in our TransAtlantic ports of call that were a bit more "hands on" and maybe of a higher activity level....our excursion in Madeira was called "Madeira Canyoning"....and it was amazing!  Here are the details and some images.......

It started with a bus tour up the mountains of Madeira from the port.  As with just about every other port we visited, the views along the ride were wonderful.  Here are some shots we took along the drive:

Like I said, the drive was lovely----the only detractor was that once we were most of the way up the mountain, the trees and shrubs started to thin out and then it became very clear that the forest had burned up.  Apparently, there had been a very serious forest fire at the top of this particular mountain (sadly the one we were spending the day on) in early August that had destroyed much of the natural landscape. It was pretty sad looking----but more disturbingly, our guide told us that it is strongly suspected the fires were set intentionally.  :(

Anyhow...the excursion had to go on...and, despite the burnt landscape (and lingering charred smell in some areas), we committed to enjoying ourselves as much as we'd planned.  As soon as we were off the bus, we met our guides---two very nice Madeiran men----who told us to quickly use the bathroom (because we wouldn't be able to again until lunch time!) and then change into helmets, harnesses and full body wetsuits (the air up at that altitude was already kinda chilly...but they warned us that the water we would be experiencing was downright frigid!).  The wetsuits & harnesses were hard to get into and NOT very flattering OR comfortable! LOL  Judge for yourself:

We then rode in our bus a little higher up the mountain where they explained exactly what we would be doing.  We were going to hike through the forest (or what was left of it) to a mountain creek where we would have to get as wet as we could to get used to the cold water and then we would be repelling down the face of a small waterfall/cliff (this was our training spot)....then we'd hike a little further down creek bed to another larger rock face/waterfall and scale down that one....then we would go to a ledge/waterfall where we would jump from about 5 meters up into a (VERY COLD!!!) lagoon below, hike a little farther....scale backwards down a rock slope into another small lagoon...hike some more...go down a "natural water slide" (sliding on our back in a crevice between two rocks into a lagoon at the bottom)...one more rock/ledge jump and swim....before finally finishing up with a 30 to 40 minute trek back through the woods to the lodge.  It was simultaneously an exciting and also somewhat intimidating adventure...but once we got the hang of it (and got used the FREEEEEZING water) we really loved it!  Here are some of the images from our adventure:

Once we were back to the lodge we changed out of the wetsuits and into warm, dry clothes and our motor coach took us to the other side of the island to a little cafe for lunch and then back to the ship.  We had originally been scheduled to not have to be back on board until nearly 9pm, but the day prior the captain had announced that he was cutting our day in Madeira 3 hours shorter so that we could leave early because we needed to "outrun" a tropical storm that was forming in the Atlantic----one of three that we would apparently be on the look out for as we embarked on our journey to cross the ocean back towards Florida!!  (YIKES!!!)  Jason and I didn't really mind the shorter day though----we had a full day and were tired from all the hiking, rock climbing, repelling & swimming...we'd had lunch and we'd even had time to buy a magnet at a souvenir shop next to the lunch cafe.  So we were ready to get back on the ship and take some photographs and eat dinner.  Our towel animal was already waiting for us upon our return:

We then got dressed for dinner. We knew that Timon would be out for photos this evening, so we wore another set of our Lion King ties:

After dinner, we joined our table-mates (Johanna, Kimberly, Jim & Michelle...plus we'd had two new ladies join our table, as well----Bev and her daughter (adult) Lindsey) at the Oceaneer's Lab (one of the kids' clubs on the ship----where we'd done some painting on the last cruise) for "Adult Flubber."  One of the activities that they do regularly with kids on the ship is to make flubber----you know, the green gooey stuff from the movie starring Robin Williams??  It's entirely silly...but very amusing....and made all the more entertaining by the youth staff (Linsay) who leads the activity dressed as her alter-ego....the wild and crazy mad scientist, Dr. Schnitzel.  It was a total hoot!!

That was our last day to see land for at least 5 days.....now let the REAL relaxation begin......