<<< More 'Opinionated Traveller' stories
Monday, 08 Feb 1999 06:29:51 PST
I arrived in Faro at night, the capital of the Algarve, the southern sunshine coast of Portugal. The Algarve is a popular destination for German tourists but is less developed than say, the Costa del Sol. The coast is still evenly divided between large tourist developments and tiny fishing villages.
There I learned my first important lesson about Portugal. Portugal is not a funny bit of Spain where they speak a different language and woe betide the misguided foreigner that implies such a link.
Portugal is a tiny corner of Europe that still lives in an older, more romantic time. The trains here don't run on time, the people are generally poor and things are just a little dilapidated. Having said that, it was most definitely the friendliest place I have been so far (which might be related to the former - the more money people get the more uptight they seem to be).
A lot of the people speak English and they all seem cheerful and happy to see you. The food is also excellent, simple, cheap and delivered in large portions. For a while I thought my accent must be particularly incomprehensible since I would order a steak sandwich and it would arrive as a chicken sandwich. Eventually I realised my English was fine and that the Portugese put milk-white veal in their "steak sandes" - if only everyone did!
Faro is more tourist resort than fishing village. It is dominated by a marina filled with the gleaming phallic floating palaces of the rich and German. The bus station where I arrived was slightly less shiny and reminded me of the hangar scene at the end of "Casablanca".
There, I was greeted by a little man who who spoke no English but managed to convey that he had a room, in fact a plethora of rooms for the night, if I was interested. I was very interested since the trip from Malaga to Faro had been a long and tiring and my head was ready to hit the pillow. Since it was the off season, I managed to get a room with a double bed, bathroom and kitchen for about $27AUS a night.
After a sleep and a shower I went off in search of food. Unfortunately it was the off season for restaurants as well. They were all closed. But as I wandered, I detected a delicious odour wafting out of nearby street and followed my nose. Up an alley, behind a steel garage door was a family run fast food emporium. They specialised in that most excellent of Portuguese delicacies, Piri-Piri chicken. Securing half a grilled chicken and some chips I retired to my room and feasted on the best chicken I have ever tasted.
Since Faro is little more than a transport hub and not particularly scenic, the next morning Ijumped on a train going west to Lagos. I found a room for the night in Lagos and continued west the next day to the tiny fishing village of Sagres. Sagres sits on the south-westernmost point of Portugal and therefore all of Europe.
Sagres is also home of the white fort of Henry the Navigator.
Son of King John, Henry was born in 1394 and spent his formative years plundering Muslim territories in North Africa. Finding riches in Africa he determined to establish a direct route to their source for his country. He set himself up in Sarges and sent expedition after expedition south in the hope of finding the kingdom of Prester John, a mythic Christian Prince with a stronghold somewhere in Africa.
The fort is one of the last symbols of the Portuguese conquest of the oceans and perches on the cliff tops, looking to the distant horizon and the distant past.
Somewhere, out on the sea cliffs beyond the fort, I sat and watched the waves as the sun went down. There, I built a cairn of tiny stones, my own little monument to the spirit of exploration.
Then I walked back into Sagres to catch the bus back to Faro. Unfortunately the bus had left. The last bus. Lagos, my bed and my luggage were about 30km's away as the crow might fly so I started hunting for some alternative transport. There was none. I decided to walk back up the road to San Bispo, the next largest town and try there. Unfortunately Bispo is about 10km out of Sagres and the way is neither straight nor level. After fifteen minutes of futile hiking it looked like being a long and cold walk.
Hitching produced no results and I was beginning to despair when I was rescued by a 14-year-old on a moped.
Charming him with my commanding knowledge of Portuguese (I know one word "obrigado" or "thank you") I managed to cadge a ride. He gave me a (literally) hair-raising ride back up the highway to Bispo on the back of his moped. He dropped me at the bus stop and he and his mate roared off into the night while I stood there bellowing "Obrigado!" and feeling like an idiot.
From San Bispo I was able to catch a late bus back to my bed in Lagos.
The Algarve is beautiful at this time of year. In high summer it is apparently consumed by hordes of English and German tourists and you can hardly see the beaches for piles of pasty white flesh. In February however it is relatively deserted, accommodation is cheap and the almond trees are in bloom with a carpet of cream flowers.
I spent another day trawling around Lagos and caught one of the infrequent trains north to Lisbon. The train was slow, nor particularly well appointed and stopped every fifteen minutes to let a donkey pass. I made two hundred kilometres in four hours before a kindly railway official shooed me out of his train, explaining that I would have to change trains and, regrettably, the next train would not be for four hours.
I wandered around the one-horse, rail-stop town and eventually found my way into the village square and sat in the sun. As I waited, a grizzled old man came to the square in a cart, unhitched his donkey and watered it at the village fountain. While he refereshed himself in a cafe, two leathered-clad kids (maybe his sons) roared up on sparkling new Yamaha's, parked them next to his donkey and joined him for coffee. A fine metaphor for Portgual if ever there was one.
I arrived late at night in Lisbon and caught the last ferry across the river. I stayed in a nice little pension near the train station for three days in and around Lisbon.
Sintra is a little town on the coast west of Lisbon that has been a favourite of Portuguese royalty for centuries. There are a couple of palaces here but for my money the best is the Moorish castle. Three kilometres uphill from Sintra takes you into the hills where the Portuguese royal palace and the castle sit.
The ruined castle has spectacular views in all directions and like all good castles is quite spooky. While wandering the broken walls and thick forest that has grown up in the centre I bumped into Allen, a hippy from Glasgow. We sat and talked for a while about how the Moors seemed to be a particular switched on race or, as Allen put it "right into their space". After a while Allen and his sheepdog wandered off and I sat in the sun for a while and contemplated what the Moors had wrought.
That night I went in search of something special for dinner. I went to a little restaurant near my hotel and on a whim ordered barbecued rabbit. I hadn't actually expected to get a rabbit... a whole rabbit, but that's pretty much what arrived at the table. Well, nearly a whole rabbit, they did cut it in half and remove all the nasty bits. Delectable!
The rest of my time in Lisbon was spend idling around town, frequenting the multitude of English bookshops and politely refusing to buy drugs from the equally plentiful but very polite dealers.
After three months on the road, my enthusiasm for travel was waning and I could feel my first European adventure coming to a close. For one last fling I decided to head for London via Madrid, Paris and Chamonix.
