Madeira 5

No guided walk today, the last one is tomorrow, so I'm going to visit the Jardim Botanico.

I still had to get out early because the buses are less frequent on Sundays. As it turned out, I was one of the first through the gate at 0900. As expected from the relative sizes of the archipelagoes, the Jardim Botanico is less extensive than its counterpart on Gran Canaria. It will be 50 next year. It is on land that once belonged to the Reid family, who still have strong connections with Madeira. The garden has a collection of native Madeiran plants. Naturally, succulents are well represented, but so are palms.

The best part of the garden though was the parrot collection, with a collection of birds from all over the world, including cockatiels and budgies from Australia. I don't know why they bothered to have a cage of pigeons though, the specimens inside looked exactly like the numerous wild ones outside.

I hope Madeira continues to maintain and improve this garden as it's a valuable resource. Better labels would help though.

On getting back to Funchal I hopped onto a bus saying Santana, as this is the village with the triangular shaped roofs. Turns out that the bus went to a different Santana, simply a suburb of Funchal. Luckily I was on a day pass. Back in Funchal I discover that buses to the real Santana are sparse on Sundays, so I have to give that up. I however visit the Madeira Museum, which is an excellent introduction to the history of Madeira. Very well executed with modern interactive exhibits.