The hotel - officially the Albatroz Yacht Club - is squeezed into a peninsula of land between the highway and the sea. The British-born Portuguese manager has a cut-glass accent and the hotel has all the atmosphere of a colonial club.
From the hotel we would walk 20 minutes along the seafront to the little town of Santa Cruz. The battered remains of a marina bear testimony to the ferocity of a storm that hit the island some years ago.
Santa Cruz offers holiday makers a few restaurants and shops and an excellent bus service around the island. It has no beaches. As everywhere in Madeira, volcanic shingles line the coast. But the flowers and some of the old houses are spectacular.
The runway is barely 100 metres from the hotel although guests are shielded from most of the engine noise. From the gates one can watch approaching aircraft swooping low over Santa Cruz as they come in to land. Cross winds are a serious problem and can close the airport for hours or even days.
We vied to take the best aircraft pictures. Here a Tui flight lines up for take-off just beyond the hotel entrance.
The runway is approximately two miles long - half of it carved out of the hillside and the other half subsequently constructed on scores of pillars. The main road runs below the runway. Our hotel is located (centre-left) among the trees on the little peninsula.
Our daily routine was breakfast on the patio -
followed by a swim in the larger of the hotel's two sea pools. As in Porto Moniz, these pools were constantly refreshed by waves. We shared them morning and evening with one or two other couples. Most guests were content to use the fresh-water pool in the garden.
To reach the sea pool, we had to descend 73 steps. While I managed the descents without a pause, I found the ascents rather more demanding. I would pause to admire the views while Jones skipped merrily upwards.
One morning we booked ourselves on a levada walk that took us several hours along a path that wound through villages on our eastern flank.
The steep terraces that line the hill-sides testify to generations of subsistence agriculture. Not an available square foot is left untilled. Although most hamlets are now served by road, there are still some whose inhabitants have to climb flights of steps to reach their houses. Centre-pic below is the snack bar at the end of our walk and the mini-buses waiting to take us home.
Below us stretched the town of Machico, Madeira's former capital, and now a bustling container port.
In the evenings, we either supped in Santa Cruz -
or picnicked on our balcony.
The daily ferry from Funchal to the neighbouring island of Porto Santo - two hours away - cruised past our window. It's further out to sea than the picture might indicate.
The sunsets were pretty spectacular -
And so were the moon rises.
Next, a flight to the Azores island of Sao Miguel.
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