I am always excited to bring you interesting content and this is one of these instances. In this post you can see an island I visited that is uninhabited and it is illegal to just sail there and roam the island. The name is Desertas islands or Ilha Deserta and it is located 25 kilometers away from Madeira towards Marocco. These islands are part of the Madeira archipelago. No one has pinned this location on 
I was able to go there with a tour I took and sailed there with a catamaran. You can see a post Madeira's Landscapes Seen From the Ocean + Spotting Dolphins here. They have a license to visit this place. Otherwise, no one can go there without permission. I'll get to it why.
The island seen from the ocean.
The island is 22.3 kilometers long from south to north. Once we got close I saw that is pretty hard to land on this island because the island is a cliff that descends straight to the ocean.
As the name suggests it's a deserted island, a brown-looking big rock of volcanic origin.
The area you see in the photo below is the only location on this island where you can land on the island without starting to climb a cliff wall. This is where we went.
Why Forbidden to go?
The island is a designated Portuguese nature reserve. There are many endangered species living on this island and the ecosystem is very fragile and arid. It is forbidden to go there without a license since 1990.
It is home to sixteen species of birds. Eight of them are sea birds. You can also find a scarce population of feral goats, rabbits and rodents.
Additionally, you can find an extremely endangered Deserta Grande wolf spider that is endemic to this island. There are only about 5000 of them in the whole world. This spider is thought to be the largest wolf spider on earth with a 12cm of leg span. The bite is painful and venomous to humans. That information wasn't fun to my girlfriend who is terrified of spiders 😀. Fortunately, our guide reassured us that they only live near the northern tip of the island.
You can also find an endangered Mediterranean monk seal species there that only live in a few select places. It is thought that only around 700 exist on earth. The population near this island was only 8 in 1998 and now it's approximately 40. We were honored to meet one, will show you photos later in this post.
The catamaran we came with.
Watching the cliffs and rock formations, it is pretty apparent that the island is of volcanic origin. Desertas islands came into existence about 5 million years ago.
We were only allowed to walk on a small patch of land and on a certain path between poles. That's how hard are they trying to preserve the island. We took a very short loop trail while the guide provided us with information about this island.
This is a dragon tree, not many of them on the island. It is fenced off because the goats are trying to eat and destroy it. Love this tree, would like to one grow in my yard back home but it won't survive the northern climate.
I said that the island is uninhabited. Well, it's not entirely true. It is inhabited by general people but there are some geologists and there are a few research stations on the island. So most of the time there is someone on the island.
This is the place where they are situated. You can see two of them outside, making food.
There is a constant threat of rockfall in this area. The guide showed us a foundation of a small house that was destroyed by a rockfall in the past. Fortunately, no geologists were in there at the time.
Different layers are recorded in the stone. Different volcanic eruptions. By the way, these geologists regularly climb these cliffs to get up there and do what they do.
There you can also find a small room with an exhibition and information about the animal population of this island. There was a fake Mediterranean monk seal. I took a photo of it because I didn't think that I will see it in real life.
When we were done with our schedule on the island, we had some free time to just chillax on the beach and have a swim. Soon we went back on the catamaran and the crew was getting ready to leave. We just started to leave when suddenly something big poked its nose out of the water it was a MEDITERRANEAN MONK SEAL. I quickly scrambled to attach my bigger lens and get a photo of this rare creature.
To my luck, it even came close to me. I was really fortunate to get this seal captured.
A photo of some fishies that appeared near me too.
It was time to leave the island. It was an amazing experience to set a foot on this island.
I'll leave you with this photo I took of this seabird on the way back.
