13th July

Have I ever mentioned before, that I have an amazing shower in the house? It is huge, with big sliding doors, but that’s not why I think it’s great. It has a window, right in the shower. With the view of the ocean of course, the great blue ocean. At the rate that I am taking showers, won’t be any skin left soon. Just love the view. My grandma used to tell me that we wash away our skin with this crazy habit of ours. I think she is right.

We had a great morning, on board of a glass bottom boat. Two guys were with us, sailing and giving us lots of info about the nature reserve we were about to visit. The Garajau Nature Reserve, which was created in 1986 to protect this particular coastline of Madeira. Now only boats with special permission are allowed to enter. When we looked high up the cliff, we could see a statue that is one of the seventh replicas of the one in Rio de Janeiro. There are two in Portugal, the other one in Lisbon.
In the old days someone was always on the lookout up there for whales. When he saw one, he started waiving a flag and pointed towards where he saw the big fish. The boats down waiting then did they best the catch it. They built a “road” along the shore to help pull up the giant. When the low tide came, they were ready to chop it up for further use. Those days are gone.
There is a nice little pebbled beach there with a cable car to carry you up after you’ve finished swimming, sunbathing.
Once we got there we able to observe various fishes through the glass. We saw lots of Parrotfish, Turkish wrasse, bream and a lonely barracuda who kept trying to eat the small fishes, with not much luck. The sea was pretty choppy, some were clutching their sick bags,but we were happy with Mish. According to him it was better than a roller coaster ride. Wind in my hair, seabreeze ( in the early nineties that’s how I was planning to call my perfume, the scent of the sea, which was never created)…. At least by me. Lots of other perfume houses came up with similar ones since than. I missed that boat. I mean in the perfume business.
The highlight of our trip was seeing several Dolphins. Though not the Bottlenose dolphins which are more common here, but a few Spotted Dolphins.
We were happy, next time maybe we should try swimming with them. Now that would be quite an experience!
Getting off the boat and saying good bye to those two guys (they were really nice, one of them came to the island because of his wife, how nice) we didn’t go too far to find a restaurant to eat at. Picked the Beerhouse, a first time. Nice white rattan furniture, purple pillows, was very inviting, but because of the wind we opted for indoors. Again sticked with seafood, shrimps on skewers for Mish( finally he is trying out different foods, Mum is happy), I had ” Feijoada”. A dish I had before with white beans, shrimp, fish,served with rice. The type of food I would be cooking at home, if I was living here full time.

Keep imagining what would living here be like? Taking my son to school, then going to the market to buy fresh veggies and fruits, picking up a few slices of tuna…pruning my roses in the garden, sitting in my study which of course overlooks the ocean, and writing… It would be a dream come true! Must wait for all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle to fall into place, and then my time will come. With God’s willing!