Another delightful day for shore leave in Madeira which is a province of Portugal.
We booked a short ecotour (12:30 to 1:30) in a local "tukxi", which was a tuktuk used as a taxi.
Our driver was a delightful young man who introduced himself as Victor (Vitor in Portugese).
When we took off quietly we realised that this was an electric vehicle made by Piaggio, so we had plenty to talk about on that subject. He showed us the main sights and told us the history of the country. He walked us up to the top of a very old fort.
He drove us through very narrow streets and scooted up steep hills to show us the original mansions. He let us off in the middle of Funchal and gave us his email and we gave him our blog link.
We wandered past the waterfront craft stalls and found a statue of Madeira's favourite son:
On our way back to the ship we saw a fort on the pier; it was called St Jose.
We paid 10 euros to climb to the top and found that it was recognised by the Guiness Book of Records as the smallest country in the world. It is the Principality of Pontinha. It had two windmills and two solar panels, so could claim to be a fully carbon neutral country!
Victor told us that this ship was built to the same specifications as the early Portugese explorers' ones.
No comments:
Post a Comment