Porto Santo is not Madeira’s little sister but its opposite. Around 43 square kilometres, roughly 5,500 residents, barely any forest, and instead of cliffs one continuous sand beach 9 kilometres long along the southern side \u2014 effectively the island’s entire inhabited front.<\/p>\n
You get there by ferry from Funchal in about 2.5 hours, or by plane in 15 minutes. The ferry normally runs once a day, which leaves about five to six hours on the island for a day trip. Anyone who wants to swim rather than walk should plan two nights.<\/p>\n
The town of Vila Baleira is easily covered: one main street, one square, the Columbus house. Christopher Columbus married Filipa Moniz, daughter of Porto Santo’s first captain, in 1479 and afterwards lived on the island for a time \u2014 historically documented, generously interpreted for visitors.<\/p>\n
The rest is landscape: Pico do Facho at 517 metres as the highest point, waymarked trails across the volcanic cones, and a climate markedly drier than Madeira’s.<\/p>\n
A hire car is rarely necessary on Porto Santo \u2014 the island measures about 11 kilometres end to end.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
9 kilometres of sand, 2.5 hours by ferry from Funchal: the second island is flat, dry and runs by different rules.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":77,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[28],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coast-ocean","tag-porto-santo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatsonmadeira.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}