Barcelona

Bus to plane to train and now I’m back in Barcelona. My fifth time here in six years; it now kind of feels like a home away from home.

As for Portugal, I don’t know. It’s a very poor country, with one of the lowest per capita income rates in the EU. If you remove countries in serious trouble like Greece and Romania, Portugal is at the bottom. I spoke to two different people who have PhDs and are working in the tourist industry for minimum wage (about 600 Euros a month), which is roughly what a half-decent apartment costs.

Sardines and cork were historically part of the Portuguese identity. Sardines have been overfished and are now being commercially raised in fish farms, so when you order them in a Portuguese restaurant and have a romantic image of a local fisherman delivering his catch to the restaurant, well, probably not. The cork business took a major hit ten years ago when many wine producers moved to screw tops, although I’ve read that it’s making a return.

That leaves tourism, which is a huge driver of the Portuguese economy. Because of this, any area of the country that has any tourism potential is milked for every last dollar of hospitality-industry revenue possible. Almost every town I rode through or stayed at in the Algarve was overrun with tourists (which wasn’t the case when I rode along Spain’s Atlantic coast last year). Anecdotally, some friends of ours went to Porto last year and all they told us was that it was “too touristy” for their taste. Several people who live here did recommend some areas of Portugal that they thought would be great to visit and are still pretty unspoiled.

But hey, I got to bike the entire Portuguese coast from one end to the other, the weather was beautiful, I swam in the ocean and didn’t get run over by a bus, so . . . two thumbs up from me.

Goodbye to . . .

The cigarette machines, a quaint reminder of our past. On a related note, Portugal is also “open carry” (alcohol, not guns), so it also took a little getting used to seeing people walking around in the evening double fisting beers or mixed drinks.

The pictures of creepy sentient strawberries with teeth who enjoy hopping into a blender. Smoothie anyone?























These signs, which according to Google Translate mean “Bags for the coconuts from your dog.”










And the polite well-dressed young men all over Lisbon asking me in perfect English if I wanted to buy any weed or hash. No thank you.

And finally, some advice I got from someone here about eating at restaurants abroad - don't eat at any restaurant that has pictures of the food on the menu, that has someone standing on the sidewalk asking people to come in, or serves tapas if it's not in Spain.

Last Day in Portugal

I started the day with a run down by the water. There’s nothing like spending time around damp
mudflats in hot weather to stimulate an appetite for a big breakfast.

Then back in the room, I crumpled up my t-shirt, buried my face in it, inhaled deeply and surprised myself by deciding I could definitely go another day in it.

I spent the day on the water around here. Faro is basically at the edge of a large saltwater marsh that is home to lots of birds, turtles and baby fish whose parents come in from the ocean to the marsh to give birth (thereby avoiding the large predators in the ocean but, unfortunately for them, delighting hungry birds).






I started the day on a boat ride through the marsh with a biologist who identified many kinds of birds and crabs we saw, but don’t ask me to repeat any of the names. Boats in the marsh have to navigate through narrow, winding channels to get out, but you can eventually hit the ocean if you know what you’re doing.

We also stopped at two islands to walk around including Isla Deserta (the red dot on the map above). This is technically designated as an uninhabited island, but it turns out there’s one guy who lives here.








This is his house. He’s a local fisherman and he started living here before the area was designated a national park. Everyone says he’s a nice guy, and he pops into Faro once a week or so to grocery shop and visit his wife. Otherwise, he just lives here on the island with his solar panels and shallow well.

On the far side of the island there’s also a beach (that you need a boat to get to).















Across the inlet is another island that has a bunch of really pretty beach houses. In the summer the island population is about 2,000 and in the winter about 20.

In the four hours I was on that trip, the tide rose sufficiently that many of the marsh islands disappeared. This is a view just past low tide.







This is the view just before high tide. The sticks in the water mark where the islands are so that boats don’t run into them.

When that trip was over I hopped on a ferry and went to the Praia Faro, or Faro beach. That’s on what is essentially the other island that makes up the barrier between the ocean and the salt marsh (the green dot on the map). By the time I was done exploring the beach I was pretty much done for the day.









That leaves the only tragedy of the trip so far; I didn’t make it to the Hellgarve Tattoo Rock Festival. I’m just too tired to do it justice.

Tchau, Loulé

Bike is gone, panniers are gone, and no need to get up at 7:00 this morning. Just a quick stop at the Loulé market and I’m out of here.

WARNING: some of the following images may be disturbing for sensitive viewers.

The market is pretty small by European market standards, but it has pretty much everything most people need day to day. Several bakers, lots of fresh fruit, wine, fish, spices and even some toy stalls for the kids.

Next time you order a nice monkfish filet grilled with olive oil and garlic and topped with capers and a delightful lemon-butter sauce, see if can get this image of these monsters out of your mind.

In this day and age, the thought of walking to a papelaria like this one to find yesterday’s newspaper from your home country seems kind of quaint.

This is the main parking lot for the Loulé hospital, which was filled to capacity. But the odd thing I noticed (as shown in the picture) is that pretty much everyone around here drives beat-up Fords, Citroëns or Renaults. But this parking lot seemed to have nothing in it but shiny BMWs, Porsches and Audis. I don’t think doctors in Europe get paid anywhere near what American doctors get paid, but photos don’t lie.

And now I’m in Faro, the capital of the Algarve. Or as I call it, the place where many parts of the public infrastructure are crumbling, but the street signs are awesome.

I tried to go to lunch at a place on this street that was recommended – no way I could have found this street on my own – but the owners decided to take the week off.

But the big news is that I saw some guys setting up a large stage alongside a huge banner announcing the “Hellgarve Tattoo Rock Festival.” It starts tomorrow. I don’t know what it is, but you can bet that anyone who changes “Algarve” to “Hellgarve” and then adds the three words Tattoo, Rock and Festival has got me clearing my calendar.

And one piece of general advice. When you get to a hotel, any hotel, and the electronic key card doesn’t work, before you go down to the front desk and get someone to assist you, remember that hotel room doors open in, not out.

Bike Day 5 - Praia Du Luz to the end of the road

Today was the end of the road for my bike trip. I don’t mean “end of the road” in the figurative sense, I mean it in the literal sense in that I kept riding with the ocean to my left until the road ended at the westernmost point of continental Europe.

This is what it looks like on Google Earth.

Whenever I feel like I’m going in the wrong direction, which happens several times a day, I always stop and say “recalculating” quietly to myself. I think it’s funny, and I have no one here to dispute that so I’m going to keep doing it.

The Algarve has many areas I enjoyed, but all of the towns in the eastern 80% of it are very touristy so I would recommended it only to people who don’t mind being around a lot of tourists. On a non-judgmental observational note, I noticed that every town I stayed in had lots of pizzerias. I also witnessed at least five instances of British tourists asking the desk clerks at the hotels I was staying at where there was a good pizzeria (the answer was always “Just walk out the door and head toward the beach. You’ll see plenty of them.”). That’s my observation. If I were young and single I’d open up a Portuguese pizzeria in England and make a killing.

Anyway, today’s ride was exactly what I’d been hoping for over the last few days. Isolated coastal roads, beautiful ocean views, and the constant possibility of heat stroke, dehydration and/or falling off a cliff. From today’s ride:

Yes, that's my road going up the mountain.

These are the ruins of a 17th century castle that was manned with 6 people whose job it was to shoot cannonballs at pirates trying to steal the tuna catch from local fisherman. Substitute a few words in that sentence and it also precisely describes things going on today, 400 years later.

There was a “moat” which I hopped across no problem. It was about 5 feet wide and 4 feet deep (but really, the informational sign called it a moat). I guess maybe they figured there wasn’t much need for protection from the land side.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the voluminous amount of snails everyone was eating. I’d assumed that was a cultural tie in to Portugal’s coastline and seafaring, ocean-bound history. But then today I saw thousands of them sunning themselves on milepost markers along the highway, so I guess I’ll have to reconsider.

The closer I got to the end of the ride, the more I rode up and along beautiful cliffs. There were many paths that went right up to the edge, here there was a 300-foot drop straight into the ocean, but not a single guardrail or sign telling people to try not to fall off the edge. Take that, National Park Service.

Anyway, the bike company guy picked me up at the lighthouse and drove me to Loulé, a modest town miles from the coast with no pizzerias. I transferred all of my stuff back out of the panniers (and also transferred some stuff back in – at the beginning of the ride they gave me a toolkit that included a huge wrench and enough tools to disassemble and reassemble my bike. I quietly slipped them all

into my pack and gave it back to them. I figured that if anything went wrong with my bike that required tools like that, the only tool I was going to use was my mobile phone.)

I stopped in this café for a late lunch. The menu was in Portuguese and had no pictures of the food, the waitress spoke no English, and I had only the vaguest sense of what I was ordering. Finally.

Bike Day 4 - Praia Da Rocha to Praia Da Luz

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from my last two trips, it’s that biking along the Atlantic coast out
here means lot of elevation, consistently ranging from large hills to small mountains. Because I stay in oceanfront towns, I almost always go on a big descent into town and then an equally big ascent going out. Imagine my delight when I started my ride today by coasting down a long hill to the main road. At which point I realized I’d gone the wrong way and had to ride back up that hill to get to the beginning of the ride, which of course started with a ride up an even bigger hill.

A few miles out of town I noticed that the written directions for the ride referred to the local airport as an “aerodrome.” This provided a huge clue in my quest to figure out why I just haven’t been able to connect linguistically with the person who wrote text that accompanies the maps.





But that is all forgotten now that I’m comfortably situated poolside at the four-star hotel I’m staying at today (in which my room, 004, is in a completely different area of the hotel from room  04).











I think I’ll just focus on whether I should have the pool boy give me a towel so that I can go for a dip here or walk down to the beach and enjoy an ocean swim. Perhaps I’ll do both.

Some pictures from the ride today.

The town I’m staying in is much smaller than those of the prior few days, which suits me.

And, I get such a kick out of the road signs here. Does that one on the right mean to be on the lookout for Curious George?

Bike Day 3 – Quarteira to Praia Da Rocha

As I was fumbling around town this morning trying to figure out which combination of roads would get me out of there, I realized that if 80% of the written directions for a trip like this are pretty good and 20% don’t correspond to any version of reality (this describes the directions for my trip this year), then all of the directions are useless because if you’re not on track, you don’t know if it’s because you’re actually in the wrong place or if you’re in one of those 20% portions of the directions. Having done this four times now, I’ve decided that I could be a pretty good direction writer, just in case you know anyone who’s hiring.

How many reasons can you think of not to get chicken at this place? Make sure to click on the image so that you can see the chicken before you total up your reasons. I’m imagining the owner talking to the painter saying “I want something that’s really going to pop and get people to stop here. Here’s my concept for the design . . .”















I rode for a while through this marsh, which is right behind a popular beach. There are a lot of areas like this here – beach, then dunes then brackish marsh.

I also have a picture of a Portuguese Water Dog walking around there that I was going to throw in, but I figured the turtles provided more than enough cuteness for one day.

Today’s ride was long, hot and dry. I rode for miles around places like this, where I was very glad to have lots of water, a spare inner tube and low gears.








Not the most engrossing video, but around here once you’re off the beach everything here is sere and dusty except where people water. How dusty? After I took a shower this evening, the towel I used to dry off with had brown spots from wiping off the dust that the shower didn’t get.

I try to be super alert when there’s traffic around, because the driving I've seen here can be pretty erratic. Like RV’s riding with two wheels up on the sidewalk (which would basically take me out if I were riding in front of them). Here’s my theory – most of the tourists here are from England, Scotland and Ireland, where everyone drives on the left. They rent vehicles and are so unsure about how far over to the right they need to be that they get nervous and overdo it. I’ve driven in the UK, so I know what that feels like. But I never drove on the sidewalk.

Speaking of Brits, this is a picture taken in Albufeira, the epicenter of bad, drunken British behavior during the summer. I was talking with someone who grew up here and he told me that people call Albufeira “the new Ibiza.” Then he hung his head in shame. I felt bad for the guy.










For tonight, I’m in Praia De Rocha, another beach town.

In this part of the Algarve, the towns aren’t at beach level; they’re at cliff level.

Nothing says “disconcerting” more than having a relaxing day at the beach just to find a 20-pound piece of cliff debris* come plummeting down on you or your companion. That’s why there are signs all over the beach telling people to stay near the water. “The beauty of Portugal. Come and get to know it up close. But not too close.”




But back to me, I checked into my room and was pleased to find that it has an outside balcony where I can dry the clothes I washed in the sink today. Tomorrow I’ll be ready to ride, with gear that smells refreshingly of Portuguese shampoo.

*”Cliff debris” is not my term. It’s the term used in the warning signs.

Bike Day 2 – Olhao to Quarteira

Today I said tchau to Olhao and headed west, keeping the ocean to my left at all times.

I’d say I scored another 7.5 in the not getting lost department today, despite directions like this one – “A new section of bypass has just been opened and this is not shown on the map. You should ride along the section of the new bypass until reaching a raised roundabout where you should take an exit signed Faro. Follow this road down to a second roundabout and aim left here, then you briefly join the old road where you head right toward the old roundabout marked on the map, where you should aim left again.” Could I ask anyone what any of this means? No, because I was riding on the main road to the airport and everyone was going 70 mph.

Martha told me that riding with panniers would feel like riding in sand. Fair enough. But what about actually riding in sand with panniers? What does that feel like?















The route today took me through more marshy stuff in the Ria Formosa National Park. If you don’t care about egrets and flamingos, you should at least go “aww” for cuteness when you learn that Portuguese Water Dogs come from here too. And intriguingly, this park was recently named one of the 7 natural wonders of  . . . Portugal. I don’t want to sound like a jerk here, but really, can you name even one natural wonder in Portugal?

And if there’s a reason not to operate a major airport right next to a natural wonder of Portugal, I sure can’t think of it. The trail started right at the end of the runway.

















Speaking of dogs, I didn’t exactly need to pull out Google Translate for this sign.









The directions at the end of this trail said to go one way at high tide and a different way at low tide. “How does one know the difference?” I wondered. The answer is here. If you can see the ground, it’s low tide. If you can’t, it’s high tide. So I went the low-tide route, although I did sink in a bit, collecting a nice layer of Ria Formosa mud on my bike.

At the end of this beautiful stretch of park was, go figure, the five-star Quinta de Lago golf resort, which is surrounded by the huge, architect-designed summer homes of some of the wealthiest people in Europe. These people did not say “bom dia” to me as I rode by, sweaty, smelly and leaving a trail of dust and Ria Formosa mud near their manicured lawns.

From today's ride:

Everyone said to have lunch at BJ’s along the way, so I did. For better or worse, this region (The Algarve) has been a summer destination for British people for 50 years, so most people near the beach towns speak perfect English. Which they did at BJ’s, and when you combine the Ella Fitzgerald playing through the sound system and the ketchup and mustard on the table, you kind of have to remind yourself that you’re not in Ocean City.





After some down time in Quarteira, I left the beach area and went into town for dinner. Everyone (but me) was eating snails, which I guess is a thing here. Snail orders were served in “doses,” like “I’m hungry tonight. Let’s get a full dose of snails instead of a half dose.” Why? I don’t know. That will remain a mystery, along with why middle-aged European men going to the beach believe that a tiny black Speedo will cure whatever ails them.

And one last thing. If anyone ever tells you that you can’t wear the same T-shirt for five days in a row, they don’t know what they’re talking about.