Visiting Madeira Island you are in for an experience and not just a visit. Here you are in the majestic nature, welcomed by a hospitable people. You will enjoy the local culture, a rich gastronomy and an unforgettable beauty. Madeira is called the Pearl of the Atlantic. It is a Portuguese island, west of Morocco, with subtropical climate. The seawater temperature varies between 17ºC at the coldest in February to the nice 24ºC in the late summer. The rich volcano soil gives the island its abundant greenery – you have lush flowers the whole year as well as the enormous variety of fruit to be found in the winter as well as in the summer. Throughout the island, custard apples, mangos, passion fruit, bananas and avocados grow profusely. The flowers like bougainvillea, frangipani, birds of paradise, orchids, wisteria, jacarandas and a lot of more flowering trees and plants make the island a floating botanical garden. The craggy mountain tops, where the highest is Pico Ruivo at 1860 m above sea level, drop into a series of deep ravines that cuts through the landscape to the sea, making lush green valleys below the dark basalt peaks. The blue water of the Atlantic Ocean is so deep that sperm whales often are found swimming next to the coast. The island is 57 km long and 22 km wide at it’s widest. The north of the island gets more precipitation than the south, and this made it necessary to construct the 1800 km of waterways or Levadas to conduct the water for irrigation of the sugar cane production that mostly is found in the southern part of the island. Many of these levadas provide fantastic walks through the breath taking landscape. Madeira is sky, mountain and sea at the same time. Here you can do para gliding in Calheta. You have mountain climbing, mountain walks, mountain biking, forest hikes, levada walks, canyoning, bird watching, coastering, swimming, surfing, whale watching, deep sea fishing and diving at the same place and the whole year around. After this you can relax and rest in fantastic accommodation, quiet and comfortable but all near restaurants, bars and coffee shops.In the old part of Funchal a lot of venues are ongoing all the time. In one of the oldest streets, now closed for cars, Rua Santa Maria, there are bars, restaurants, art studios and a permanent display of the Painted Doors, most of the doors in this street are painted with a great variety of motifs or otherwise decorated. During the weekends you have flea markets. Parallel to this street you have Rua Bela Santiago. Here you have an up class building where the apartment is found. In the middle of the building there is a patio with big built in flower boxes.
