Porto Santo -- Honeymoon Vacation Getaway

Daily flight service is also provided to Porto Santo, another honeymoon island vacation spot with six miles of golden, sandy beaches. Visitors can see where Christopher Columbus once lived. Scheduled tours of this 'undiscovered' island paradise are ideal if you don't rent a car. Joao Goncalves Zarco, a Portuguese explorer, first spotted Porto Santo in 1418 and then Madeira in 1419, claiming them for Portugal on behalf of Prince Henry the Navigator. Portuguese settlers established ports, cleared forests, and built an extensive network of irrigation ditches that still carry water from the cloud-banked interior and rainy coast to the drier south. The levadas, an extensive network of irrigation channels carry water from the mountaintops to the terraced fields and villages below.

This lovely, flowering land is the essence of romantic serenity . . . the brilliant afternoon light on the fishing village of Camara de Lobos . . . misty afternoons in the forest near the highland village of Camacho . . . Funchal at dusk with city lights glowing against the sun's last traces. Madeira lingers in a lover's memory like the sweet aftertaste of its sensational wine.

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