Glamping time!

…and then there were two. Riki and Liza flew back to the US early this morning. We miss them!! That’s half as much laughter and half as many dishes we get to try at each meal!

At the airport, which is almost open at 5:15am

Fortunately in today’s world nobody is ever really disconnected! We drove back to the rental apartment to finish sleeping and got scenes from the plane..

When we were a little more rested, we packed up the rental place and took in one last long look at the amazing views. Ilhas Desertas, the uninhabited island group south of Madeira, has been very interesting to us as it’s just barely visible on the horizon.

We drove to the west to Prazere, just past Calheta. We got our first tank of gas on the way, not cheap but not bad considering how much driving we’ve done around the island. There seems to be no shortage of water on the island, despite repeated forest fires.

Our new home for the remainder of our stay in Madeira is Soul Glamping!

This is our dome- a full-featured home really, but with very thin walls. By chance I’ve been learning about soccer ball making lately from YouTuber @jonpaulsballs, which uses the same underlying geodesic design (a truncated icosahedron).

Our dome is the farthest out on the top of a field overlooking a huge cliff.. ~1,200 ft above the ocean. Absolutely stunning and with yet another enormous view. Funchal was walking distance from everything. Gaula was a treacherous drive up into the midst of a hillside of houses. Soul Glamping is very peaceful and chill. The road down to it is very narrow and fairly steep, but not stressful at all to drive. The nearby towns are much more relaxed as well. It’s not “better”, but it’s what we need right now.

After settling in, Savitri and I drove down to Calheta for dinner at Buddha Sakura, an Indian, Nepali, Japanese restaurant.