Madeira, the island, is part of Portugal in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a vacation destination for Europe, with verdant hills, steep mountains and lots of sunshine. The gold of the hay fields contrasts the apple, pear and cherry orchards. Traditional houses are triangular, with thatched roofs sloping steeply to the ground. The white buildings have bright red doors and some shutters.
Funchal, our port is a fairly large city at the base of, and climbing up, steep hills.
The port has not only a cruise pier, but facilities for other sea sport fun. I saw a group of small, single sail boats in a cluster. The next time I looked, there were no sails. It seems this was a sailing class. One by one, the sails were pulled up out of the sea as each boat was righted. Another group had a dozen or so paddleboarders in a cluster. Sea kayaks paddled by our ship.
Two ships docked nearby had several masts for sails, buy I never saw them under sail. There was even a ship that looked military, but it had no markings.
All of this we know from the tour brochure and from what we could see from our balcony. I did not leave the stateroom because I was confined to our room. No, I did not do anything wrong, except to contract norovirus, probably from eating tapas in Valencia without using hand sanitizer before each stop. My bad, and I paid for it. Unfortunately, Darrell paid for it too. He also caught it from me.
Darrell got to go ashore, but not on a Viking excursion. The ship doctor was not happy about Darrell's abdominal pain (neither was Darrell) and ordered a CT scan at the local hospital. The ambulance came and picked him up, but I was told to stay in my room in case we had to stay in Funchal and I had to pack up everything to leave the ship. This was just before noon. The Jupiter was scheduled to sail at 4:00. I waited until 3:00, then took out the first suitcase to start packing. Before I even had it open, the phone rang, telling me that he was returning to the ship. We were cleared to continue the cruise. Thank God! He still had to stay in the room until the doctor cleared him the next afternoon, but I was free to leave the room in time for breakfast.
Just a word about medical care on the Viking Jupiter. There is a doctor from the Ukraine and nurses from Manila and Croatia. The medical suite has several rooms, lots of equipment, and the ability to treat several people at once. One room is capable of surgery but only simpler cases. We went there to see the doctor the first time. After that the doctor and a nurse came to our room. There have been a few people who left the cruise for medical reasons. This is not a hospital, but there is a limit to its capacity. We were on a cruise north of New Zealand that had a crew person, with a bad heart attack, airlifted off by helicopter. However, when we cross the Atlantic we will be out of range of even the best helicopters. We could not have asked for better care at home. No doctor I know makes house calls!
We are on our way to the next port of call, in the Cape Verde Islands.
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