Finally - the Glass Bottomed Boat

In all the years I’ve been coming to Madeira, I’ve not been able to take the trip out in the glass bottomed boat. They only venture forth when they have enough passengers to make it worthwhile, and they only go when weather conditions are totally favourable. 

Just to the east of Funchal, there is the Garajau Nature Reserve. Totally protected. The little, lovely and old fashioned boat that does a two hour trip goes around the edge at the end of the reserve. The glass bottom allows us to see the fish underwater. We saw parrot fish, various local varieties of wrass and Sea Bass, mackerel, Blue fish (which are green) and many others.

The rock formations are wonderful too.

And an added bonus is to approach the Statue of Christ the King closely from the sea.

I’ve blipped the Cristo Rei lots of times. It is the original one, well before either Rio or Lisbon.

And after the refurbishment, he was struck by lightning. You can’t really see on my photo, but they’re still waiting for the repair.