The Madeira bread soup

Most of the times there is nothing more rewarding, after finishing a levada walk or a hike through the high peaks of Madeira, than a hot meal and a warm bath. However, if you are still away from home and it's already late in the evening, just the hot meal will do. At least it will warm up your stomach and give back some of the energy lost during the day.

This is especially true during the Winter months, when the inclement weather becomes a constant on the mountains and hypothermia is a risk not to be taken lightly.

Most of the times, under these circumstances, dry, solid food is not really something that you are craving for. What we wish, normally, is an easily digested food with lots of nutrients to compensate our day losses. And warm. Hence... liquids. A tea is very good for this, escorted with a few crackers or a toast. However, if you are feeling homy, there is nothing better than a soup to feed and relax you at the same time. So, while you wait, late in the afternoon, for your connecting bus to Funchal, just enter in the nearest restaurant and ask for the Madeira bread soup.

This typical meal of Madeira is, somehow, a sub specie in a vast family of Portuguese bread soups (açordas, in Portuguese). They all have in common the fact that they are, in a certain way, cheap to be made. They surely were invented in a time when people were poor and didn't had the resources to buy all the culinary items that, today, we take for granted. Therefore their base is quite simple: it consists of bread cubes and boiled water over it. Without forgetting the Portuguese olive oil. The subsequent diversity just depends of how rich you store room is. You just add the ingredients and culinary herbs that you have at hand, at your heart's content. Depending of your technical expertise you can go from a simple Madeira garlic bread soup to a high-tech (and delicious, by the way) Açorda de Camarão (a shrimp bread soup, but more consistent... more solid).

Just try the simpler one, while in vacations among us. After a day's walk, I'll promise you it will taste like Heaven.

The Madeira bread soup, as served in Casa de Chá da Ponta do Pargo (Ponta do Pargo tea house), on the West coast of the island, some weeks ago. To the best of my knowledge, this soup consists of bread, in slices or in cubes, olive oil, salt, pepper, a boiled egg, segurelha (satureja montana), garlic, hortelã (mentha spicata), chili pepper and... hot water.

An endless week

My God. It's finally Friday night. We are fully in the cruise season and this week was, to say the least, frantic. Cruise ships all over the port. Waking up between four and five A.M. and never ending the day before twenty-two hundred. And the weather was not helping. Under the effects of a low pressure for almost a full week, we were having, during the same period, the usual Southwesterlies so common in Madeira, during Winter time.

Spoiled by the past two years of impeccable weather, I'm finding myself with difficulties in adapting the body to work under these more rough circumstances. Particularly funny are the boarding and disembarking moments, with five meter swell and forty-five knots winds.

Oh well... like we, cynically, say, if this life was always sunshine and roses it definitely wouldn't be for us.

The Finnish cruise vessel Kristina Katarina leaving the port of Funchal and heading to La Palma during the present day's rainy afternoon.

MS Deutschland

Although not so old (she was launched in 1998), the MS Deutschland has the looks and the feeling of the late great liners and their Era, which finished during the sixties.

Contrasting with the modern cruise ships (usually a mix of resort, shopping mall and Las Vegas casino), the Deutschland has the classic interiors now, sadly, lost in the modern naval architecture. The profuse use of noble woods and wood work and the ever present shiny brass should make any ship fan more than happy to sail with her.

As for me, with was a pleasure to be her Pilot.

A sculpture in MS Deutschland's beautiful main stairway. It's not the only one. Along the vessel's different halls and stairways there is plenty of artwork to be admired.

Picture taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT3.

Post-processing in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Pilot Card:

Ship's name: M/S Deutschland

IMO number: 9141807

Type: Cruise ship

LOA: 175.30 mts

Beam: 23.00 mts

Summer displacement: ?

Max draft on manoeuvre: 5.80 mts

Propulsion: Diesel engines, two variable-pitch propellers, total propulsion power: 12320 KW

Rudder: 2 Spade rudders - Independent

Bow thruster: 1 (total power: 1000 KW)

Stern thruster: N

AIDAcara

Started today my three weeks working period, after a couple of weeks off-duty, in the port of Funchal. We are already in the full cruise ship season, so today I've had house full. Starting with the arrival manoeuvre of the M/V AIDAcara, at 0700 in the morning, we received also the cruise ship Ventura (with ETA to 1230) and, subsequently, the M/V Braemar, arriving at 1600. Southwesterly winds, varying from force 5 to 7, were a constant during the all day. Add some rain showers in the mix and a two meters swell outside and you'll got the receipt for Pilot's wet feet, which, in fact, did happen.

Well... seaman's life. Like a fellow colleague has the habit of saying: if this was easy, it would never, ever, be for us.

The AIDAcara leaving the port of Funchal, a few hours ago, and heading to Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in the Canary islands, her final call in Europe before the transatlantic crossing that will lead her to Rio de Janeiro and to a two-months period sailing in the South-Atlantic waters. Godspeed.

Pilot Card:

Ship's name: M/V AIDAcara
IMO number: 9112789
Type: Cruise ship
LOA: 193.34 mts
Beam: 27.60 mts
Summer displacement: ?
Max draft on manoeuvre: 6.00 mts
Propulsion: Diesel engines, two variable-pitch propellers, total propulsion power: 21720 KW
Rudder: 2 - Independent
Bow thruster: 2 (total power: 2000 KW)
Stern thruster: N

Picture taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT3.
Post-processing in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Love and hate

I've always had a bipolar relationship with my professional seafaring life. Sometimes it seemed to me the most romantic career that anybody could ever dream of. Other times it simply looked just like a big waste of my (ours!) time in this good old planet. Granted, most of it is filled with water. So being a professional mariner in it is not as out-of-place as we might think. However, seafaring is a rose filled with thorns. To live this "adventurous" life the price to pay is high. We'll gradually loose contact with family, with friends. And that solitude will walk with us through our entire career, being it ten or thirty years long. It's like being a monk, without the habit and the implied celibacy.

And this feeling is not a new one. Already in the ancient Greece, a philosopher of the Era stated that there were three kinds of persons on the planet: the living ones, the dead ones and the seafarers. During my two years as a Cadet, when everything looked sunshine and roses and when I, rightfully, thought of myself as being a descendant of Magalhães or Vasco da Gama, I used to listen a lot one of my older shipmates favorite remarks: the sea is for the fishes. Sometimes they went as far as to emphasize that if this was the right place for us, we should have born with flippers, something that I obviously had not.

From those days on, my relation with my chosen career was always a tie between the good days (and they normally were marvellous) and the bad ones (normally disgusting).

One thing, however, I never forgot from those early days. I asked a shipmate (a First-Class Seaman, now retired for years), during one of the many boring lookouts on deck we used to do, what would he like to do after retirement. He said he'd love to make an ocean voyage. On a sailing vessel. Pushed only by the wind. To forget the endless seafaring life on motor-vessels, their main engine vibrations and the propulsion cavitation. Free from the rat race.

Like all souls in this Earth, he, too, searched the purity of his life though simplicity. And I knew that our happiness in life is merely dependent on the satisfaction of (mostly) a simple wish. And that our personal universe, to lead us to happiness, doesn't have to be so large. The beauty of life is on the simple things. We just have to learn to discover and cherish them.

We just have to take (as Robert Pirsig wrote in "Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance") a handful of sand from the endless landscape of awareness around us and call that handful of sand the world.

A fisherman launches his raft to the sea, one early morning, in Porto de Galinhas, Pernambuco, Brasil.

Photo taken with Nikon D40X and cheap Nikkor 18-55mm AF-S 1:3.5-5.6 G VR kit lens.

Post-processing in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

A trip to the North coast

The North coast of Madeira has unique landscapes. Both human and natural. Today I made a short afternoon trip to the coastline between São Vicente and Santana. Rainy afternoon and not the best light. Anyway, the trip was merely a sigthseeing one.

The North coast of Madeira (camera aimed to the NE), photographed from the S. Cristóvão restaurant belvedere, in mid-afternoon. On the left upper part of the photo, near the horizon line (and almost disappearing in the lower clouds), lies the island of Porto Santo.

Rose garden in Quinta do Arco, in Arco de São Jorge. North Coast of Madeira. One of the biggest in Portugal, this rose garden has more than 1700 different species of these lovely flowers.

Swimming pool decorative figures in Quinta do Arco, in Arco de São Jorge. Although the air temperature was merely so-and-so and the sky was cloudy, the pool's water was truly inviting for a swim.

The fabulous altar of the XVIII century São Jorge church, one of the most beautiful in Madeira. Handheld photo at ISO 3200, already in the physical limit of the Nikon D40X (sorry for the noise!).

All the photos taken with Nikon D40X and Sigma EX DC 18-50mm f/2.8 Macro HSM and Cokin System P linear Polarizer (except last one).

Post-processing in Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Chão da Ribeira

Chão da Ribeira is, probably, the loveliest valley in Madeira. Located in the NW coast, close to Seixal, it's basically a suspended valley, about three kilometres long, and cut in the rock by the erosion forces of the Ribeira (stream) do Seixal. Contrary to most mountain valleys in Madeira (which are narrow and deep), its floor (about one kilometre wide) is flat and with good land for agriculture. Therefore, although the valley has no permanent human residents, the lands are well kept and a permanent source of potatoes and other vegetables for their owners.

Due to its altitude above sea level (about 300 meters) and because its opening to NNE, the valley has a moisty climate though all the year. However, the mountain walls around it keep it sheltered from the strong NE winds so typical in Madeira, helping, therefore, the agricultural efforts and making it at the same time one of the best spots in Madeira for a relaxed weekend among nature.

Endemic of Madeira, the Massarocos (Echium Candicans) are one of the symbols of the island and a common presence also in the Chão da Ribeira valley.

Picture taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC-FT3.

Post-processing in Adobe Photoshop CS3.