Christ of Garajau

The solitary statue of the Christ of Garajau, resting on the promontory with the same name, faces the deep Atlantic Ocean on a chilly evening and watches over all the mariners at sea.

Older than the most iconic statues of Jesus around the world (The Christ of Corcovado dates from 1931 and Lisbon's Cristo-Rei dates from 1959), the Christ of Garajau was inaugurated in 1927 and from that year on stood as a reference on the Southern Madeira landscape to all the vessels passing by Funchal.

Not surprisingly the statue of the Redeemer gets the biggest respects from the Italian crews, whose Captains always consider the passage of their ships by that symbolic place as a moment of respectful spirituality.

Picture taken with Nikon P7100 held over a rocky wall. Self-timer exposure of 0.6 secs at f/8. ISO800 in JPEG file corrected for saturation, contrast, sharpness and digital noise in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 4.3