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Madeira · 2023

Day 13

A white boat deck holds a table with a drink can and cup.
An orange life ring hangs at the stern as a hilly town comes into view. Deep blue water stretches to a hazy, distant coastline. A foamy wake trails the boat as rugged green hills rise ahead. Foam trails the boat while a misty mountain coast rises ahead. A cushioned white bench on the deck faces a sunlit, glinting ocean. Sunlit yacht salon with galley, a set table, and views of the sea. A tidy berth with pillows beside a window over calm water. A slim passageway on a yacht leads past the sleeping cabins. A tiered city at the water's edge rises beneath a plume of smoke. A string-lit white chapel glows above a dark street at night. A seawall walkway curves along a pebble beach toward a headland. A large cruise ship rests in the bay beyond a pebble beach. A palm-lined walkway looks out over the water and a cruise ship. A busy circular square with national flags, white buildings and a mountain backdrop. A broad promenade with street lamps, palm trees and strolling pedestrians beside green hills. A historic wooden sailing ship with bundled sails rests in a modern port. A white catamaran carries relaxed passengers against a densely built hillside town. A white boat deck frames the coastal city and its hill climbing behind a breakwater. A coastal city with a marina of sailboat masts climbs a green mountainside. A compact coastal town with a church tower sits beneath a great forested ridge. A white catamaran named Magic Dolphin Eco sails past steep reddish cliffs. A crowded white tour boat sails across the blue water leaving a foamy wake. A steep grassy cliff drops to the sea below a town scattered up the hillside. White padded deck seating, a red life ring and a bright blue sparkling ocean. White houses scattered across green hillsides above the deep blue water. A pod of whales breaks the surface of the calm blue sea. Several whales swim side by side, their dark backs and fins above the rippled blue sea. A line of whales moves across the ocean with fins breaking the surface. Whales swim through choppy blue water under a soft sunlit sky. A crowded white Magic Dolphin eco boat carries passengers across a glittering ocean. A lone white boat sits far away on a calm, hazy ocean. People line the bow of a boat, watching dolphins leap ahead in blue water. Two dolphins break the surface, one splashing in the deep blue sea. Two dolphins glide close together through dark blue water with white foam. Several dark dorsal fins and backs of a dolphin pod poke through the ocean. Small groups of dolphins surface and leap across a glittering, hazy ocean. A distant boat sits at the horizon above a dazzling, sunlit sea. A green hillside town with a long harbour pier rises above the deep blue ocean. A populated mountainside slopes down to the ocean under a pale hazy sky. White foam churns in the blue wake trailing behind the yacht's stern. The open ocean glitters with countless reflections of the sun. A white table and cushioned bench on a boat deck look out toward the sea. Faint islands sit on the horizon beyond the churning wake. A distant sailboat sails the open sea beyond the boat's foam. A brown rocky cliff topped with white buildings rises from the blue ocean. A coastal town climbs a green hillside beside a long white arched seafront walkway. Orange-roofed houses climb steep green slopes down to the water's edge. A motorway viaduct on pillars spans a hillside town beside the sea. An industrial dredger cuts across the water in front of a coastal town. White apartment blocks perch on a dark rocky cliff overlooking the sea. Foam and churned water trail behind a boat beneath its canopy. Snacks and a fruit bowl sit on a cushioned deck looking over the sea. A motorway viaduct on tall pillars crosses above a rugged red-brown sea cliff. A colorful village climbs a cliff above deep blue water. Grand white hotel towers with orange roofs line the shoreline. Brightly colored houses perch on rocky cliffs above the sea. A towering vegetated headland drops straight into the sea. People relax and swim by a volcanic pebble shore. A cable car crosses over rugged cliffs with hillside houses. Sunlight ripples on the water around a cruising yacht. A hillside city spreads along the coast on an overcast day. Tall striped rock faces rise from a dark river-stone beach beside the sea. People relax on a grey pebble beach beneath tall orange-brown cliffs. A white sailing ship crosses calm blue water past a tall cliff. White houses rise up a hillside crossed by a raised highway. Red-roofed houses cover a mountain slope above an anchored sailboat. A dark plume of smoke drifts above the hills behind a seaside city. A yellow fort sits at the shore below a hillside of orange-roofed houses. A blue-and-white catamaran docks beside masts and a church spire.
Journal Notes

General

The Madeira archipelago lies in the North Atlantic within the Macaronesian region, on the African tectonic plate but politically part of Portugal as an autonomous region with Funchal as its capital. The islands recorded a population of 251,060 in 2021, and roughly half of the inhabitants live in the capital. Madeira is the largest and most populous island of the group, and its south coast, where the main town occupies an amphitheatre shaped valley, holds the harbour and the roadstead from which the ocean excursions of this day depart.

Funchal itself has a population of 105,795 and ranks as the sixth largest city in Portugal. Its built area rises from the waterfront towards slopes of about 1,200 metres, which shelter the town from the northern weather and give it the warmest climate in the country, classified as a hot summer Mediterranean type with humidity around 70 per cent throughout the year. The harbour below the old town has long been the leading Portuguese port for cruise liner dockings.

Since 2007 the port of Funchal has been dedicated to passenger traffic, cruise ships, ferries and tourist craft, while the remaining fishing activity and cargo trade were transferred to the newly developed port of Caniçal on the eastern side of the island in 2017. A ferry crossing to Porto Santo takes about two hours. For marine excursions this leaves a working harbour in the middle of the city, with berths for catamarans and smaller boats close to the promenade and to the hotel quarter of Lido further west.

The day described here is built around a catamaran cruise and whale watching, one of the most popular ocean activities offered from the island. Departures run along the south coast and then out into deeper offshore water. Twin hulls give the craft stability and open deck space, and most cruises are accompanied by crews who include trained spotters or marine biologists. Sightings are possible throughout the year, although the composition of species changes with the season.

The wider setting is a marine environment rather than a resort shoreline. The Madeira Nature Reserve covers about two thirds of the island’s area and was created in 1982; its components include the reserves of the Desertas and the Savage Islands, Garajau and Rocha do Navio. In clear weather the Desertas Islands can be seen on the horizon southeast of the island’s eastern tip, and within a few sea miles of the coast the water drops to depths that bring oceanic species close to land.

History

Madeira was claimed in 1419 by João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, captains in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator, who were driven to Porto Santo by a storm; the main island was settled from 1420, and Funchal itself was founded between 1420 and 1425 by Zarco. The settlement took its name from the wild fennel that grew in the valley. In 1425 King John I made Madeira a full province of Portugal and handed it to Henry the Navigator as a gift.

The first economy rested on wheat, but in the 1450s falling returns turned the settlers towards sugar cane, then rare in Europe and treated as a spice. Cane culture spread along the southern coast from Machico to Fajã da Ovelha, and Funchal became the most important industrial centre of the trade. The system of production first practised on a small scale on the island was later transferred to the Caribbean and Brazil; the first enslaved people, Berbers and Guanches, were brought to Madeira in 1452.

Sugar was gradually displaced. From the seventeenth century Madeira wine became the island’s most important product, and English merchants who settled in Funchal from that century consolidated markets in England, North America and the West Indies. Viticulture had already been praised in 1455 by the Venetian navigator Luís de Cadamosto, and the fortified wine of the island became one of the most popular luxury drinks of the colonial Western Hemisphere during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Funchal’s own history runs parallel to that trade. The settlement was raised to the status of town and municipal seat between 1452 and 1454, became a city in 1508 under King Manuel I, and received its cathedral in 1514, when the bishopric was established there. In 1566 French corsairs sacked the town for fifteen days, after which the defensive system was rebuilt. During the sixteenth century Funchal was a regular stop for caravels travelling between the Indies and the New World.

In the twentieth century the island moved from an Atlantic entrepôt towards a year round resort, and the observation of marine animals grew out of that change. Fishing, transport and trade had shaped the relationship with the sea for centuries; modern whale watching developed in the late twentieth century as conservation and eco tourism gained ground, and it now operates under guidelines that limit approach distances and interaction time. The Desertas have been a reserve for Mediterranean monk seals since 1990, when the colony numbered only eight animals.

Geology

Madeira island is the summit of a submerged shield volcano that rises from the floor of the Atlantic on the Tore rise. Volcanism began over an east to west rift in the oceanic crust along the African Plate during the Miocene, more than five million years ago, and continued into the Pleistocene until about 700,000 years ago. Later activity built scoria cones and lava flows upon the eroded shield, and the youngest eruptions occurred in the west central part of the island 6,500 years ago.

Erosion then dominated the shape of the island. Two large amphitheatres open to the south in the central part, and the ridge that runs along the middle of the island carries the high peaks, from Pico Ruivo at 1,862 metres down through Torres, Arieiro and Cidrão to Grande and Ferreiro; the eastern end of the ridge stays below 200 metres. From this central spine sea cliffs, valleys and ravines reach the coast, so that habitation is concentrated at the mouths of the ravines where the heavy autumn and winter rain runs to the sea.

The cliffs of the south coast belong to this system. The rock walls fall directly into the water between two river valleys in places, and their faces are cut into platforms at sea level. These flat benches, known as fajãs, were formerly reached only by boat and are still cultivated where they carry soil. Swimmers use the dark pebble strands and the volcanic rock at the water’s edge, and the same shore material appears further east as black sand below cliffs topped with green vegetation.

Offshore, the volcanic edifice continues below the waterline. The submarine slopes of the archipelago are shaped by gravitational, erosional, sedimentary and volcanic processes, and flank collapse has been recognised as a hazard, with megatsunami evidence raised from the flanks of the islands. Deep water lies close to the coast here, which shortens the passage to the habitat of oceanic cetaceans; sperm whales in particular are found where the shelf drops quickly rather than over wide shallow banks.

The landforms of the day are matched by a particular water regime. Centuries old stone channels known as levadas carry rainwater from the wetter northern slopes to the south for consumption, irrigation and electricity; they span thousands of kilometres and date back to the fifteenth century, and the Socorridos hydroelectric station is fed by them. In the first half of 2022, 33 per cent of the electricity consumed on the archipelago came from renewable sources.

Things to See

The visit begins at the harbour front of Funchal, where a promenade of street lamps and palms looks over a marina filled with yacht masts, catamarans and tour boats. A historic wooden sailing ship with furled sails lies in the modern port among the working craft, a reminder that the waterfront was a commercial harbour before it was converted to passenger use. Between the marina and the town lies a busy circular square with national flags and white buildings, framed by the mountain wall that rises behind the city.

Along the water west of the harbour a seawall walkway curves beside a pebble beach towards a headland, with a large cruise ship at anchor in the bay beyond the stones and a palm lined path following the shore. The beach is a dark shingle strand rather than pale sand, a reminder that the island has almost no natural sand of its own. Further along, people rest and swim from the volcanic pebble shore, where the dark stones run straight into deep blue water.

The catamaran used for the crossing carries its own small world. Its sunlit saloon holds a galley and a set table with a view of the sea, a tidy berth with pillows stands beside a window over calm water, and a narrow passageway leads past the sleeping cabins. On deck a cushioned bench faces the ocean, a white table holds a fruit bowl and snacks, and an orange life ring hangs at the stern. The name Magic Dolphin Eco appears on the hull of the craft that works below the coastal cliffs.

Once clear of the breakwater the boat follows the coast and then turns into open water. The wake trails in white foam behind the hull while rugged green hills stand ahead and the coastline fades into mist. On calmer legs the surface glitters with countless reflections and faint islands rest on the horizon, and a distant sailboat crosses the open sea beyond the foam. On the return, an industrial dredger cuts across the water in front of a coastal town whose apartment blocks perch on a dark rocky cliff.

Cetacean sightings are the purpose of the cruise. Some of the largest animals appear as a line of dark backs and fins moving across the surface, often several whales side by side, their bodies breaking the water under a soft sky. Bryde’s whales occur in warm temperate and tropical waters worldwide and have been recorded in the archipelago, where individuals group genetically with the offshore form of southern Africa; sperm whales, short-finned pilot whales and humpback whales also belong to the species list of these waters.

Dolphin pods are the most frequent encounter. The common dolphin is the most abundant cetacean in the world, with an estimated global population of about six million, and it travels in active groups that break the surface at speed. Its slender body carries a dark back and a white belly with an hourglass pattern of grey, yellow or gold on the flanks, and long jaws lined with fifty to sixty small interlocking teeth. Groups frequently converge on the bow of a moving boat.

The return to Funchal passes a sequence of settlements and landforms. Towns climb green hillsides above the water, some of them with orange roofs and a church tower beneath a forested ridge, others crossed by a motorway viaduct on tall pillars. A tiered city at the water’s edge appears below a plume of smoke from the hills, and further along a steep grassy cliff drops to the sea while houses climb the slope above the shore.

The day ends in the city, where the evening belongs to the old town and to the hills above it. A small white chapel outlined with strings of lights glows above a dark street, and the promenades and squares fill with the lamps of restaurants and wine lodges. The Madeira wine trade that shaped the town is still visible in the cellars of the merchants, and the island’s fortified wine, about 85 per cent of which is made from the red Tinta Negra grape, remains its most characteristic product.

References

  1. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Madeira. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira
  2. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Madeira Island. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira_Island
  3. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Funchal. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funchal
  4. Wikipedia contributors (2026). History of Madeira. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Madeira
  5. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Autonomous Region of Madeira. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_Region_of_Madeira
  6. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Madeira Nature Reserve. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira_Nature_Reserve
  7. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Desertas Islands. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desertas_Islands
  8. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Bryde’s whale. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryde%27s_whale
  9. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Common dolphin. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_dolphin
  10. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Short-finned pilot whale. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short-finned_pilot_whale
  11. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Sperm whale. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sperm_whale
  12. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Humpback whale. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humpback_whale
  13. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Madeira wine. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madeira_wine
  14. Wikipedia contributors (2026). Levada. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levada
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  18. Valls, Mota, Vieira (2019). Opportunities for Slow Tourism in Madeira. Sustainability. 11. 4534. doi.org/10.3390/su11174534
  19. Santos, Quartau, Brum da Silveira, Ramalho (2019). Gravitational, erosional, sedimentary and volcanic processes on the submarine environment of Selvagens Islands (Madeira Archipelago, Portugal). Marine Geology. 415. 105945. doi.org/10.1016/j.margeo.2019.05.004