Valley of the nuns

The South African receptionist, Cecilia, had arranged a private taxi excursion for us today because none of our planned trips were available, and anyway a taxi is cheaper!

We expected to go out at 12 noon but got a call to our room saying that the driver was free earlier, so could we go down to breakfast, please? This we did, and set off at ten.

The next surprise was that the driver Virgilio had totally changed the original plan, and suggested that he take us to various sights not including Ribeiro Frio (cold river). I gather that the weather in Madeira changes so frequently, because it's so mountainous, that all plans are provisional. Local knowledge is a godsend under such circumstances. V. took us to several.places with viewpoints over the Atlantic ocean, and to Cabo Girao, which has a glass viewing platform, " glass cliff" showing the sea far below. Don't look down if you don't  like that sort of thing! At 580 m. Above sea level, it is apparently the highest sea cliff in Europe.

We also passed through Camara dos Lobos, a fishing village where Winston Churchill used to come and paint.
But my favourite spot was the Valley of the Nuns, a hidden valley to where the nuns of Funchal retired when they were sick of pirate raids on the port city. For a when, all went well for them, but when pilgrims stopped coming, they returned to Funchal in the nineteenth century and founded the Santa Clara convent ( or perhaps they returned to it? I haven't got a guidebook).

It is not possible to descent to the valley from the mountainside, but there's still a village there, so there must be a way in via a lower road. I was happy to see it from above, with the trademark bottlebrush flowers, known as Pride of Madeira, waving in the foreground of the lower reaches. Madeira is very green, in case you had not noticed. The water comes from clouds, falls as rain, and is directed through a network of irrigation channels called Levadas, to individual farms and gardens. The four main industries of the island are: tourism, bananas, Madeira wine and sugarcane production. Water is needed in great quantities for all of these. I had already bought some 'agricola rum' which must be made from local sugar cane. Rum is very important to the island, too.

In tbe afternoon GG lazed and I went out for a town walk, and later we had an agricola rum and coke, and went out to eat in fish/ chicken in a restaurant in our local street. It's been cleaned up a bit and no longer sports sex workers and sellers of live turtles, but there are signs everywhere warning of the danger of the process of extermination of rats that is under way. De- ratification, I think it's called in Portuguese.

After a harbourside walk, GG came over all peculiar when she heard a man playing an Ed Sheeran song on a non-guitar outside a restaurant in the street, so we sat down at a table under a jacaranda tree, near the old fort of Sao Tiago, and ordered a rum punch. It was hot and sweet and nothing like a cold remedy, as I'd imagined. We got rather giggly, but eventually dragged ourselves away to the hotel, where we played Scrabble, three sheets to the wind. I managed an amazing score of 300-plus and won. I don't usually drink, nor do very well at Scrabble, so there was magic in the air, for sure!

Switched off the lights at midnight and conked out like a Madeiran dog in the heat of the afternoon.