Today due scheduling constraints we have two birding tours booked. The first one, in the morning, is a pelagic trip out of Machico harbor and was the first one we booked. And then they offered a later tour up to the highest mountain of Madeira to see the very rare Zino Petrel and we decided to do it too. So now we wake up early, take our car from the very narrow parking and then drive half our towards Machico. Where we have to find a parking place which is more hassle than we thought but we get one relatively close to the harbor and now it is time to hurry towards the embarkation point.
On the way to the harbor we are passing a couple beaches, one rocky and not so good for swimming and one with sand that seems perfect for a cooling swim afterwards.
Here we are quite close to airport and we can see the planes taking off seemingly by jumping off the cliff, it looks quite exciting when you are not in the plane. But we will have to leave that way too unfortunately… And then we are at the harbor for our tour which is described in a different post and is quite bumpy but allows us a good view of all our bird targets and none of the mammals for some reason.
Returning from our tour we are quite taken by the fortress that we have noticed during our boat ride and that seems to protect the harbor. We find a staircase towards it and up we go and soon we are at the entrance. It seems to have been bricked up at some point and at a later point someone took a hammer to the bricks creating an entrance. We look for any signs that entrance is forbidden and there are none so of course in we go.
Inside it is quite interesting with overgrown paths full of flowers and other weeds but there are some obvious paths so we decide to explore them for a short distance in both directions.
In fact it is not that exciting really and when we hear voices coming from the other direction we decide to exit as fast as we can as we are not sure how safe it is inside.
We explore a bit more outside afterwards and enjoy the great views but then it is time to return towards the town and the beach.
Before the beach we explore the town a bit more and find a beautiful miniature fort in the middle of it all. It is all yellow and called Forte de Nossa Senhora do Amparo and it actually is still used as the headquarters of the Machico Municipal Assembly. We are happy that it can be entered freely and there is no one else inside, quite surprising.
Funnily all the cannons are at the ready here, if there is ever a revolt against the Municipal Assembly they are prepared to take action for certain. There is also a geocache here that we find and then it is time to go to the beach.
By the time we arrive the beach is quite full but we find a place to sit down and then we have to prepare to take a bath into the ocean. Which is really cold, similarly to Tenerife.
Luckily there are free changing rooms here and then we take the plunge into the ocean looking for fish and just enjoying the cooling weather.
We spend about an hour just enjoying the beach and then around 1PM we decide to return to our AirBnB to relax a bit before our second birding tour of the day that starts at 9PM at continues till 1AM so it is quite a busy day.