From Paris we have a direct flight to Funchal airport very early in the morning. It is a relatively long flight from Paris but we make it around 9AM to the impressive Funchal airport. Not impressive as large but impressive as in the approach is quite interesting and the runaway is extended artificially over a highway into the ocean almost. And then it is time to deplane again and walk to the terminal, it seems building the connectors is too much for the European airports.
We pass through customs and border controls easily and then go to pick our car. However the car rental company does not have a car because we put the rental time at 10AM as we didn’t expect to pass so fast. So we are stuck in no man’s land for an hour before we finally can check in at the car rental counter and pass through the last layer of security. Finding the parking area for rental cars is also interesting, it is parking lot 9 with the fun part being that it is not mentioned anywhere else so we just go following google maps and finally make it somehow.
The drive to our first goal, the Whale Museum, is quite short at 19 minutes and is a good way to get used to driving in Madeira on narrow, winding roads that also have significant elevation changes. That is unless you go on the circle road which is a four lane divided highways but with relatively low speed limits. We find parking in front of the museum but before entering we decide to walk around it to enjoy our first views of the lush island. It looks a bit like Hawaii or Lanyu Island in Taiwan and we hope we will have as much fun here as we had during those visits.
Similarly to Lanyu at least there are relatively few true beaches but some can be found and some have been created artificially for the scores of visitors. Fishing and water activities are also quite important here both for locals and tourists.
On the side of the museum there is a small garden with some interesting whale murals and seats and we enjoy taking photos of both before turning around towards the entrance.
Here we see the first Madeira grapes from which the famous Madeira wine is made and also a few of the ubiquitous, on the island, Madeiran wall lizards which are an endemic species.
And then it is time to enter the museum and after paying for the entrance fee we are directed to start our visit at the bottom of the three floors while the entrance is at the top. At least the descent is quite gentle and there are lots of informational signs to understand what you can see at each level.
On the way we stop to use the restrooms and nearby is a small temporary exhibit with some interesting art and also some paintings of people we don’t know. And then we are at the bottom where the actual exhibits start with a huge room dedicated to the whaling industry. Not what we expected to see in a museum dedicated to whales but it is part of the culture of Madeira.
In fact whaling was quite a big industry on Madeira before tourism with multiple boats out at all times reducing the whale population almost to extinction.
They even had lookout overlooking the ocean at all times to see where the whales are so they can send the boats to the best spots and on land they had factories to process the whales and produce oil and other byproducts.
There is also a bit macabre section with bones from the killed whales and a slightly less macabre section with scrimshaw art which is engraved on the whale bones.
The second and unexpected to us room is even larger and is dedicated to whale conservation, something we can get behind more than killing them.
The exhibits here are quite interesting including some related to the ocean in general including a yellow submarine that you can take for a simulated dive. And we really like the fish sphere and the explanation of how the gulls are doing their best to find and eat them. And then we get a message that our AirBnB is ready and it is time to make our way to Funchal to find our AirBnB and check in.
