Diversifying.

 

Shipping industry changes with the years and port industry has to keep pace. To adapt. For centuries a port of call for transatlantic voyages, welcoming, over decades, the biggest of liners and cruise ships, Funchal reinvents itself nowadays in a new roll, accommodating regularly a new trend in the business that is growing through the years: the mega-yachts.

In the picture one of those - MY Saint Nicolas - departs from Funchal on a calm early morning Spring.

Picture taken with Xiaomi Mi11i.

Serra da Estrela - A late winter season

 

Two months ago, on a short trip to our highest mountain range, Serra da Estrela, a storekeeper told me that the weather was so warm during the New Years Eve that he was selling ice creams at 1600 mts amsl, in his own store, at Lagoa Comprida.

However, as the saying goes, when it rains it pours and, after one of the driest winters in my memory, the end of March brought wet weather and a massive snowfall, carpeting Serra da Estrela, above 1500 mts, in pure white.

In this picture, taken close to Nave the Santo António, an ancient glacier circus, suspended between the glacier valleys of Unhais da Serra and Zêzere river, we can see the majestic sight of the most dramatic landscape in our highest mountain. On the horizon line, where the earth meets the sky, we can see, from left to right, the cyclopic rocky formations of Cântaro Raso, Cântaro Magro and Cântaro Gordo. Like mytological figures, these three monolithic brothers, sculped by water and ice over 300 million years, stand tall, guarding a natural patrimony that we recognize now as deeply vulnerable.

Picture taken handheld with Xiaomi Mi11i smartphone.