Madeira Island Discovery

Hotel was under construction and we were not told before. Welcome drink is awful sweet sparkling wine,horrible. You could take out the museum and embroidery place,neither interesting and have a waterfall hike@

A fantastic trip with a varied itinerary seeing highlights across the island. From levada walks in wonderful scenery, to boat trips to spot dolphins and whales, swimming in the amazing natural pools, making bread, tasting regional delicacies and plenty of madeira wine and poncho tasting. I Loved the addition o tea at the world-famous Reid's Hotel making this trip just a bit more special than it's competitors. This is a wonderful trip led by an outstanding guide in Benny. Highly recommend this trip to anyone.

We loved Joao! He made the trip **

Great adventure and itineracy. Joao was an amazingly knowledgeable and fun guide. Nice sized group, worked really well. Maderia is a beautiful island.

The entire trip was wonderful and well planned out . The hotel was bad as it was being renovated so no hot water for showers and banging all day

An excellent holiday, very enjoyable. The tour leader and programme were both very good. The trip provided an excellent introduction to Madeira.

Excellent itinerary and knowledgeable leader, who also knew the right places to eat. Slightly let down by the absence of aircon in the hotel - it wouldn't usually matter but this was an exceptionally hot wekk.

This was my first group tour and it was a truly fantastic experience! Our group leader was so knowledgeable and a great asset to our group, he went above and beyond to make sure we were all happy. The tour of Madeira showcased the fabulous landscape, industry and local people. I had the most amazing time and would encourage anyone who is thinking about going to book!

This accomodation for this trip was at one hotel in centre Funchal Though well located it had no air conditioning and was very noisy. Explore booked this hotel knowing its problems which had been highlighted in previous reviews. Lack of sleep due to heat and noise severely impacted the enjoyment of this holiday. When I complained I was offered a fridge in the room as compensation. If explore had been genuinely remorseful they would have acknowledged that all trip members were affected and looked to see how all could be helped I have been a customer of Explore for over 30 years and feel let down by their lack of care

It's the second time I've done this trip with Explore. It's just a lovely holiday on a beautiful island, with a nice easy paced itinerary and every day is enjoyable. The coastline, mountains, flora and fauna are amazing for such a small island and Funchal is a really nice old town with lots of nice restaurants and shops to look around and squares and gardens to sit and enjoy a coffee. I'll definitely be going back again.

A good way to see all the island at a good but not exhausting level of activity. Small group size is ideal

We saw a good deal of the island over the week with an enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide. Sao Jao. The group got on well with each other and everyone seemed keen to learn about the island. If I had to make a change I would like to have had a day in an off road vehicle exploring some not so easily accessible roads.,...which I currently did on a motorcycle on my free day

This was an excellent tour and enabled us to see all parts of the island. I researched the itinerary before booking and it didn’t disappoint me. Excellent way to discover the beautiful island from both land and sea. The food was also excellent and our guide had a lot of great recommendations as well as being a font of information for all things Madeira. The hotel was in a great central location that made finding your way around very easy. Excellent staff, who were super friendly and always helpful. The hotel is undergoing much needed updating but when that’s completed it will make a huge difference.