Madeira Revisited 1. When I went for the first time to the island of Madeira in November 2016 (posts Madeira 1 to Madeira 8), although I had been a little disappointed in certain respects, or perhaps because of that, I really wanted to return to see the wilder parts of the island. So I booked three back-to-back trips, each with a different focus, with Naturetrek for this month. The middle one did not attract sufficient numbers, so was cancelled, so I decided only to do the first and longest one, called ‘The Floating Garden’.
Madeira is a small island, about the size of the Isle of Wight, but it has a number of different ecologies, all based on the volcanic geology that made the island a very recent 7 million years ago.
We were 15 with two leaders, and travelled around – when not on foot within the capital, Funchal, in two minibuses. But this first day, once we had settled in to our very nice hotel, the Residencial Pina, – noting that it was going to be a steep hike up from the waterfront – and had a bite of lunch, we set off for an exploration of the centre of the town.
We reckoned that this was probably an abandoned school building
The clothing is misleading. The weather was quite mild. The steepness of the road is not misleading!
Our botanist guide was giving us the names of all the trees and plants we saw. My brain couldn’t cope!
The trees are called ‘Pride of Bolivia’, Tipuana tipu
Once at the municipal gardens I decided to peel off and do my own thing. 
The 1982 statue celebrates the octocentenary of St Francis of Assisi’s birth in 1182 – three centuries before the island had been (re)discovered by the Portuguese. Brugmansia flowers.
The tree was in the street, not the gardens. The black and white building materials are typical.
Detail of tree
It was nice to be back in roads I recognised, though I didn’t stay very long, and made my way back up to the hotel.
I learned in due course that the hotel was about 70 metres from sea level.
The view from my balcony
We walked down again in the evening, after a briefing on our next day’s activities, and ate at the very good (all the restaurants we ate at were very good, though some were not as good as this one at handling our need for separate bills) Restaurante dos Combatantes, right by the municipal gardens. Some returned by taxi, and some of us walked back up. I could see I was going to be much fitter by the end of the seven days!
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