Madeira is an archipelago northwest of Morocco, and a beautiful spot. It is mountainous and known for its waterfalls and flowers. If you search for photos, as I just did, you’ll find them to be of professional quality. But they all lack the one thing worthiest of note, throngs of people, including us.
This photo (not mine) is of a trail on the far north of the island that extends out into the ocean. We hiked it yesterday, and during that 3-1/2 mile affair must have passed 1,000 others. Imagine now the photo above with people as far as the eye can see, each stepping aside for others. Imagine we all have to park somewhere.
I am not complaining, as we are just tourists too, here for the food, climate and scenery. Am I going to complain? I remember reading last year or thereabouts of Europeans being fed up with tourists, of all of the hotels and AIRBNBs occupied, so that they who actually live there have nowhere to vacation. We are here in April, shoulder season, and we are told that peak season in July is one massive traffic jam.
After this portion of our journey we’ll be staying in a French town called Ferney Voltaire, which is a suburb of Geneva. It is not a tourist destination. Voltaire once lived there, and having done so transformed the place from a dumpy village into a civilized enclave. His statue is in the town square.
In the meantime, we’ll fly back to Lisbon later this week via EasyJet. We came here on one of their birds. It’s an hour and a half journey, and during that time the flight attendants did not offer even a glass of water to the patrons aboard. Instead they congregated behind the bulkhead and moved things on shelves from one box to another. A cart did roll by us, and on it were various perfumes, as if we were in the duty-free part of the airport. The woman pushing the cart did not even look at us, sensing, I suppose, that we held no potential for such a purchase.
Speaking of airports, the one in Lisbon is designed to route everyone through a massive well-lit duty-free zone. There were hundreds of displays of liquor, technology, candy, and more liquor. These places do not get there by accident, and people do spend money there. But I’ve never seen an actual commercial transaction in progress, only people hurrying along needing to catch their flight, hopefully one that serves water.
Some years back we stayed in a hotel where we ended up in a snack room with other tourists, and these were men of the world. One was from New York, and I think his occupation was designing cardboard containers. Think about it, how everything we buy is in a box specially designed for that object, minimizing space and maximizing protection. That does not happen by accident. Special factories and technicians do this stuff.
I’m reminded of that because 1) one of the people there was carted off by ambulance that night, and we never learned of his fate. And, 2), one of them told us, there is no such thing in the world as a natural sandy beach. If there is sand between your toes, if you can walk on it without heavy-soled shoes, the sand was trucked in. And indeed, Madeira has one beautiful sandy beach near our complex. The sand, we are told, comes from Morocco.
We went to that beach a couple of days ago, and I got religion again. My wife took the plunge, meaning I had to as well, and as I came out of the water I said “Jeeeesus Chreeist!!” 64 degree water? We could use wetsuits, but that’s not going to happen. Today we’re taking a tram to a mountain top where there in an arboratum. This island is a floral paradise. We’ll be with several thousand others. Not complaining! It is Mediterranean climate, excellent seafood, one sandy beach and an easy place to fall asleep near open windows.
Piece of Mindful 
Mark, thanks for the report! I have wanted to visit Madeira for a long time, partly because of beautiful looking hiking trails. But I cannot stand hiking in crowds, so I’ll deprioritize Madeira for now. Maybe theres an off season.
Two places I can highly recommend in Europe for hiking where you will see no one are the Pyrenees and Maritime Alps in France. Two places I spent a week hiking in June 25 years ago in successive years. May and June is perfect time because the ski areas and resorts give big discounts so you can stay for cheap with 2 all you can eat meals (and wine!) and hike all day without seeing a single person – the only people I encountered in the Pyrenees were Shepards, and lots of wild animals. You can hike up to 12,000 feet and the scenery is unbelievable. The French side of the Pyrenees seems equally appealing.
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You too on the church boredom? I could never wait for it to be over, always a lift to walk out that door, especially in spring. We had a priest in my hometown, Fr. Zarek, who was known for the fastest mass in town, literally rushed through it. People would flock to his parish.
My take on class reunions … Catholic kids are indoctrinated at a young age, and it sticks! Most of my class stayed in the home town, and most still go to church, a mass part of the reunion festival. Did not go, as it is, again, so boring! (My mother, and I was very young but even so was taken aback, once visited our parish priest to get permission to do manual labor on a Sunday. Otherwise smart woman.)
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I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I like beating on the very wealthy church from first-hand experience.
7 years in to St. Leonard’s catechism classes Monseigneur’s Sexcretary called my parents: “David is not at the level necessary in class.” MamaCity in a rare confrontation: “Let me speak with the Good Padre,” and she did, and would not repeat any of it to me, but I overheard the discussion with PapaSan: “All these years of paying and they were going to deny him – what were we paying for?” PapaSan was silent because he wanted no part in that bribery.
3 weeks later, after having changed nothing in my hidden anger or participation, I was Confirmed as a practicing catholic.
1 week after that I was given the choice at home – and I never set foot in that ignorant subservient role again.
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Sand being trucked in…ya sure, maybe some beaches but not all of them. Some places have had sand for a long time, before trucks. Kinda reminds me of the rumor that if you see a Zebra, then it’s just a white horse that had black stripes painted onto it.
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Of course I have no way of knowing, but the man I spoke with said what he said matter of factly. Madeira has beaches all up and down its coasts, but only one with sand, and trucked in. Inconclusive evidence, I realize. The only other beach I have extensive experience with, in my twenties, was Jones Beach on Long Island, and my then sister-in-law informed me, matter-of-factly, that they truck sand in for it too. I am not a big fan of beaches, as I find them to be hot and full of sand, and the sand follows me home, gets into everything. So my experience is extremely limited.
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Like Greg, I think, I too laughed at such baloney – world-wide that is.
Check out the Great Lakes sometime (if the assertion applies to fresh water).
Hawaii??
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Well, it’s either a case of something “everybody knows” or “all the Helen’s in the world know,” but just because beach and ocean meet does not automatically make sand. The guy I talked to on that trip did beaches for a living. There are surely exceptions but I would bet that most sand beaches that are tourist attractions are not natural. They need considerable human help.
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Reminds me of Helgoland, we revisited last summer. There’s a hike like that, high over the sea, spectacular views and close to the birds. Another place to be are the Needles on the Isle of Wight. There’s a cable car down to the beach. The UK got many places like that ofc, a trip to the Dover region would do. Top tier in the UK is the Lake District.
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So…where is the sand being “trucked in” from? Someplace with sand? Or is the sand “fake”?
If you spend any time exploring the beaches on The Big Island of Hawaii, it is very obvious that the sand is natural and native to that area.
The active volcano actually creates “new” beaches all the time, where there is sand.
There are areas with black sand, where the lava rock has wore down over time.
And if you snorkel or dive of the Kona coast, you see sand on the ocean floor that stretches out into the ocean further than you can see. No way was all that sand “trucked in”. Again…from where?
That said, there *are* man created beaches in places. Perhaps on Madeira the beaches are man-made. But sand itself is not a conspiracy.
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OK smart ass … The sand on the one beach in Madeira that has sand (there are hundreds of miles of shoreline) is trucked in from Morocco. That place has lots of it, I am told, being close to the Sahara, but people might doubt the Morocco/sand theory as a conspiracy too.
All I know are two items of information I’ve collected over time, one sitting with my then-sister-in-law on Jones Beach on Long Island in the 70s, and her telling me that the sand on that beach is trucked in in the off season. I was incredulous. The other was conversing with an interesting man one time while traveling in Europe, who could have been Keyser Söze for all I know, who worked beaches for his living on the American side of the Gulf of Mexico (America), who said either most or all beaches lack natural sand. Maybe he was talking only about the beaches he knew of. But the idea that all beaches have natural sand is popular myth.
Hawaii might produce its own sand for all I know. It is a product of wave action and friction. But then again, they might bring in barges of it from Gobi … it’s really just a small engineering project, and people don’t go to beaches that lack sand.
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Yeah, sand is often trucked in, big surprise. Especially in places that have large expanses of sand.
I can’t help but laugh at this latest headline. Is it possible the powers that be are getting desperate? They have astrophysics and nuclear weapons “experts” disappearing. Perhaps because both disciplines are filled with fake science that comprise a lot of funding, that needs a continuous fluffing of fake headlines. Does the populace register it has been almost a century since the “cutting edge” weapon, a nuclear one, was used in warfare. 81 years if you want to split hairs. That’s a long, long time.
Feds probe deaths, disappearances of US scientists. See the list.
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Anyone heard about the Jamaican beach stolen in 2008?
https://jamaicans.com/13-things-to-know-about-the-beach-stolen-in-jamaica-in-2008/
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That is a very odd story. 3/23/23, and there’s 13 things to know indeed.
It sounds like some kind of organized fraud, if it really happened (the 13 things seems like a hoax tipoff. Can you imagine how many trucks would have to running all night to cart off an entire beach worth of sand? You would think someone might notice? My best guess is a development scam, where there never was a beach, but when the investors showed up, it was “stolen”.
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I think you’ll find white sand rarer and of higher value.
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Mark, I heard of a place where that nice white sand goes. Pharma vials for things like vaccines all go into glass vials with the highest grade silica, and then are tossed into a landfill as biological waste, no recycling. And billions are made every year. So all the vaccine aficionados should be aware vaccines take a hard toll on the environment, along with all the animal testing done causing needless suffering. That story from Jamaica made me wonder if some shady supplier for pharma paid off the beach owners to let them cart it off for all the vials they were going to need to fill by 2020.
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I like that you make connections that the rest of us do not. Theft of white sand makes sense as you spell it out.
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