Porto Santo

I was reminded tonight by my parents that I had not posted in awhile.

So, it is time to catch you up!

For the kids half term, we spent the first week on a small island governed by Portugal called Porto Santo.  Most Americans will have no idea where it is.  In fact, I embarrassed myself trying to tell some of my UK friends where it was.  I told them it was north of Maldives.  I was very wrong.  Maldives is on the other side of Africa.

Porto Santo is north of Madera, about 250 miles east of Africa, and south or Portugal.  It is north of the Canary Islands and south east of the Azores Islands.  If you are still wondering where the heck we went, click this link https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?client=safari&q=Porto+Santo+Island&oe=UTF-8&ie=UTF-8&hl=en.

Many Americans do not visit the island.  It is not an easy place to get to, flights come from a few cities in Europe: London; Brussels; Barcelona; and Lisbon.

It is a pretty little island and it is little.  They had been in drought for over 18 months.  So, it rained 3 or 4 days while we were there.  No worries, we still got some sun and enjoyed time on the beach!

Jumping off the sand shelf at the beach, the hotel is in the back ground. 

We took a jeep tour of the island (when is was rainy) and we learned some interesting things.  The island is pretty small, but it has a large run way.  Our tour guide told us that it was on of the 5 emergency runways for the space shuttle.  The island had also served as a NATO base of operations for refueling operations and saw action during some of the Gulf conflicts.

This was the next to last stop on the tour.  The Island was gifted 12 canons to protect themselves from the pirates.  This is the sole remaining canon, as the other 11 were stolen by the pirates.  This one was placed up on the hill by the people.  They thought it would be good for protection there, instead they ended up destroying part of the village below.  The cannon above is the last surviving canon.  As you can see here it is sunny!

Our last stop was not sunny, it was rainy!

The beach at low tide, check out the sand shelf, the kids had a blast playing on it and jumping off it.  

The pool at the hotel.

Liam and Cian with their sand castle, they had a blast building them!

Christopher Columbus also lived on the island for awhile.  He married the governors daughter and they had a son.   She later died of birth complications.  We went to his house which is now a little museum that tells much of Portugal's naval history as they discovered new lands.

So we walked to the museum on a rainy Sunday morning.

Here are the boys under the Columbus Museum banner

We are in the courtyard and the boys are under a dragon tree.  It was cut down almost to extinction because of it's sap.  It has red sap which was very valuable as a clothing dye.

We have a lovely holiday!