Monday, May 07, 2007

Snorkelling season open

When I moved here last year there was loads of building work going on around Cristo Rei - a new beach was being created. Building anything here is a big deal, but particularly a beach: blast away part of the cliff, pour out some concrete plateaux, get a load of stones to make a pebble beach (no sand on Madeira), deck some areas, build some buildings (which will need water and electricity), oh and build a road to get there in the first place.

It's finally open! Well, kind of open: there's nothing inside any of the buildings yet, but the beach and the sea are there. And there is a cool cable car that makes a super-steep descent down from Cristo Rei to the beach.

I went down there yesterday, which was my first time in the sea since New Year's Eve (when there was, er, an incident involving an unobserved red flag. Anyhoo the point is everybody got out alright). The new beach is in the middle of the protected sea reserve, so there's plenty of stuff to see. There were no dolphins around yesterday, but a big boat has just breezed past my place with dolphins jumping in its wake. It crossed my mind to rush down and get snorkelling, but this key lime cocktail juice is so cooling...

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