Vitamin Sea

 

We just returned from a week in Porto Santo, a small volcanic island close to Madeira, staying at the Pestana Blue hotel with access to a beautiful  10km strip of unspoilt, polution free, blue flag beach, as our hotel was centre of the beach, it meant our afternoon walks averaged 8-10km round trip in either direction.  Temperatures were around 22f most days with only two cloudy days out of seven.

On our first walk I found a Portuguese  man of war on the beach  which I helped back into the sea with my flip flop.  Although I was very careful not to touch it, I didn't know what it was at the time and when I Googled it later I found they are poisonous, luckily this one, the size of my shoe, didn't do me any harm, although his beautiful trailing tentacles stretched about four feet or more and he made a spectacular performance with his purple float as he tried to catch the wind to be propelled back to the sea.

The Portuguese man-of-war is a floating hydrozoan. It is actually a colony consisting of four types of polyps: a pneumatophore, or float; dactylozooids, or tentacles; gastrozooids, or feeding zooids; and gonozooids stinging cells are located in the tentacles

On another walk I saw small wading birds  and an empty shell (presumably a larger bird had stolen it and eaten the contents).  Also a very large, volcanic looking crab with red striped legs who was impossible to capture as always ran into a rock crevice when I approached!  I will look the little birds up as don't know anything about them, they were very small.

This was an all inclusive holiday and everyone on our flight was at the same hotel, we had a lot of fun as the animations team laid on games and entertainment which we could join in.  The food was buffet style and the cocktails were plentiful

The town itself was small with only a few bars and shops, but still worth exploring.

The mountains around us were blackened by previous volcanic activity and I couldn't see much vegetation in our area, although there were allotments that were being tended, growing corn and grapes.

I have no idea what the fruits above are, they were growing in quite a few village gardens  -  any idea?

It's good to be home and Mollie the cat was well cared for, my sons have been cooking her fresh chicken nearly every day!