Madeira - 16th - 22nd July

 We’ve been thinking of doing a short trip to Madeira for the pelagics to see Zion’s Petrel, among other things and this year we decided to go for it. We booked EasyJet flights, an Airbnb and a car plus three days of pelagics and a night walk with Windbirds. 

The journey to the airport was relatively painless, although we were a little late and the transfer went smoothly. Sean got off first, went on to the booking hall and we followed. We went to bag drop, negotiated the automatic system and went to find Sean. He had managed to leave his passport on his case as it went through onto the carousel. Some very helpful staff re-assured him it happened often and they would find it. After a stressful 20 minutes or so one of the men scrabbled around under the check in desk and found the passport where it had fallen down the side. Relief all round. 

Time was getting short so we headed to Smiths, bought a meal deal and headed to the gate, arriving as the plane was beginning to board. We located our seats, sorted out our bags and settled in for the flight to Funchal. 

The flight took us across the Chanel Islands, the Normandy peninsula, the bay of Biscay then across the top on northern Spain before heading across the sea for Madeira. We landed at Funchal, taxied, deplaned, went through passport control, collecting a stamp as we went and a short walk to the baggage claim Had us out remarkably quickly. Collecting the car took a bit longer but it was the most helpful, polite and friendly car collection we’ve had. We were offered 2 cars and given the one with the lowest mileage. We thought we had booked a second driver, but changes in the booking seemed to loose it but we were offered a choice of full to full or bring back empty plus second driver for 70€ so we took that option. The car was a Nissan Juke automatic and when we went to collect it, the man said he would have to go and find it. 

We set the phone sat nav for the Airbnb and followed the directions along the dual carriage way and along the levada until we turned left up the narrowest, steepest road to the road for the bnb. We settled in, went shopping at a local supermarket and then stopped at a hot food counter in another supermarket, which we took back to eat as it was getting so late.