On Wednesday, we did home school in the morning, then we drove off in our hire car to the mountains in the West of the island. When we arrived we had a pinic lunch, then we started the walk. There were lots of cows around for some reason!

The walk started with a long downhill to a little cafe. From there we walked along  a flat path to a viewpoint over a beautiful waterfall.

There was a minibus to take us back up the steep hill, and we had an ice cream while we waited.

After the walk, when we got back to the car, we drove to some volcanic salt water pools near Funchal. There were fish and crabs in the pool, and when we stood still, small fish nibbled our feet. There were different coloured fish under water. We swam with Daddy out to a floating platform in the sea. We weren't sure about it the first time but we were brave and tried it, and then we did it again!

Today, Thursday, at home school we made a banner to welcome our friend Pilar who was flying in to join us. We saw her plane fly over the marina, then went to pick her up at the airport. After we picked her up, we went to a nice vegetarian cafe in Santa Cruz and got some lunch. We both had pancakes with mango!

After lunch, we drove the botanical gardens. We walked through the gardens to get to a cable car that crossed a big ravine to a cool little mountain top village.

We had a look around, there were tobogans that you can get down the hill, but there was a massive queue so we didn't do it this time.

We got the cable car back to the gardens and walked through looking at the plants, then we came back to the boat.