Daniel Young Travels: It Ended Well

The day started badly when the highly recommended driver we had engaged for a custom-made full-day trip emphasizing nature and walking sent a 23-year-old rookie with no knowledge of flora and fauna to take us on what sounded like a conventional village to village trip. Emma set him straight and he did his best to accommodate us, eliminating the chaff and taking us to a nice Levada walk and a reveda stroll between the cows in another area, plus some extraordinary viewing spots. A critical TripAdvisor comment will be posted, nevertheless cause when you pay dearly for an expert guide, unannounced substitutions are forbidden. The substitute drove well and went on many narrow one lane mountain roads which were thrilling but he completely lacked the knowledge of flora and fauna and background that we expected. In his naiivete he told us that the younger generation was not interested in agriculture.

An especially lucky break was finding our next hotel in Porto Moniz where we took our lunch break at the formulaic but scenic Orca restaurant. A lovely if touristy town distinguished by some very nice enhanced lava stone swimming areas and extraordinary sea views with rocky protrusions. A visit to the 28-room Aqua Natural Hotel led us to its new and beautiful 50-room sister hotel, the Agua Natural Bai, which had room for our last four nights in Madeira. All's well that ends well.

Back in Funchal we had some passion fruit poncha, a rum based iconic local rum drink, at the highly rated King of Poncha hole-in-the-wall near our hotel and, thus intoxicated, took a short stroll, explored the possibility of a half day trip tomorrow to the east end of the island with a taxi driver who turned out to be unavailable because of his second job as a driver for the government Archive and museum. We will work that plan out at the nearby taxi stand tomorrow

Too tired to add comments to photos. Just enjoy.