Thursday – Funchal, Madeira
Today, we arrived in Madeira. Most importantly, though, Tracey arrived right on time, without any hitches whatsoever. A 6am flight from London Heathrow brought her to Madeira’s International Airport at roughly 10:30am. She was on board the Marco Polo by 11am.
It’s only been a short stay in Funchal; we left port at 2pm, heading for Mindelo, in the Cape Verde Islands. Fortunately, both Tracey and I have been to Madeira before, so not having enough time to explore wasn’t a huge loss. We sat on deck, drinking tea and watching the clouds creep over the high mountains, blocking out the early sun, and reminisced over previous visits to the island; cable car rides, and the toboggan experience (please refer to The Boudicca blog, two years ago for full story).
It was a lunchtime of many hellos and welcomes, and an afternoon of work and dozing (poor old Tracey was extremely tired from her long trip, so I let her sleep while I worked on my laptop).
This evening, after dinner, we went out on deck to look at the stars. Tracey thought she’d seen something online about a couple of spectacular meteor showers, coinciding tonight in an awesome double-display. Sadly, after standing out on the breezy deck in our thick coats for almost an hour, we failed to spot a single meteor. Back inside, we called by the office to check online when the times would be… turns out we’re about a month too late.
I still have the makings of a cold, or something, and am hoping it doesn’t develop any further…
Despite both of us feeling generally dozy, we did manage to make the late-night cabaret; Richard Sykes entertained us with a host of Elvis classics, this time playing to a much larger, and very appreciative audience.
We have two sea-days now before we arrive in Mindelo; that’s four workshops and a lot of wave-spotting.
