Lagos Portugal 28 September 2002.
Seven o’clock yesterday morning saw us boarding the bus in Seville for Lagos where we arrived at 11:00 a.m. after travelling the monotonous route along the motorway across the dry untidy-looking Spanish countryside with frequent vistas of fruit and vine plantations. Unfortunately the orange-yellow sandy soil filled with stones has the natural appearance of builders’ rubble, which makes the countryside look messy. The dryness of the soil and dried-out sparse vegetation add to the general appearance of a barren landscape, neglected, abused and abandoned. This stretches right across Spain and into Portugal. Spain seems to be a massive building site, with construction work going on everywhere, apartment blocks being put up seemingly in the middle of nowhere with grey dirty grass and scrubland surrounding a few whitewashed blocks of flats where, as far as it was possible to reach, graffiti artists have been having a field day. Portugal has less building works and slightly less graffiti but it more than compensates for this in the destroy-the-environment stakes by using the roadside verges and river banks as rubbish tips. I cannot believe that the amount of horrid litter and rubbish everywhere can be tolerated by the Portuguese government. I remember being shocked in Hungary, but if anything this is far worse. It makes you very appreciative of the beauties of your own country; things taken for granted like green fields, hedgerows, clean public toilets, clear road signs, gardens, clean pavements, lack of litter and graffiti, no dogs running everywhere, decent shops that sell what you actually want such as bread and fresh clean vegetables rather than ceramic holy water containers and Portuguese lace doilies. I dozed off after a while but whenever I woke the landscape looked exactly the same. We stopped at Huelva, which didn't inspire, nor did any of the other towns such as Albufeira and Portimão, but in fairness the bus stations are usually outside the old town centre. As we got off the bus in Lagos we were approached by a man in his sixties who spoke just enough English to ask if we needed a room as he had one for 25 Euros a night. He gave us the address and seemed nice. Everywhere in town was a lot pricier and noisy so we went to his place near the church/museum and police station. When we arrived he was quite upset, explaining in a mixture of English and Portuguese that the room had already been let to someone else. He then took us to his neighbour two doors down, a smiling Portuguese lady who speaks no English. She agreed with him to let us stay for as long as we like at the same price. We have a clean room with our own wash basin and toilet but have to share her shower. We also have a little balcony with table and chairs overlooking the back road, which is cobbled and clean, no graffiti and whitewashed walls. From up here we are at a roof level to the baroque church of San Antonio – not of Padua but of Lagos, we have been assured. Inside it is all gold-covered woodwork, both the gold and the timber coming from Portuguese territories in Brazil. We can sit drinking Portuguese wine just a few yards from the belfry and the ornate entrance portico to the church – fortunately there is no bell as tomorrow is Sunday. However, what last evening seemed a haven of peace was rather noisy all night with cats prowling the roof tops and mewing, and hundreds of very noisy seagulls screeching with the dawn.
Then we found a pleasant restaurant and sat beneath umbrellas, having mackerel salad and mixed omelette. What is disagreeable in Portugal, and sometimes in Spain, is the cover charge which is forced on all customers. We were obliged to pay two euros each for three slices of bread between us, two pots of butter, a pot of fish paste and another of cream cheese. This is obligatory, and actually cost more than the omelette at €3.90. You still had to pay if you didn't want it, so they were able to sell the butter, cheese etc. several times over as they were all pre-wrapped. It took pleasure from the meal, and we have now decided not to eat out at all if we can avoid it. Portugal is definitely more expensive than Spain, despite what the guide books may say – at least this part is.
Everywhere is crammed with English and German tourists plus quite a few French visitors, but there are not many Americans here. Every table around us was full of English people who made no attempt to use the local language at all, even saying thank you in English. They are perfectly polite though, and the waiters were very helpful and friendly. We felt rather silly working out what we wanted in Portuguese and actually trying to read it off the menu to the waiters rather than pointing. They understood okay of course, but that's their skill not ours. [...]
Lagos is a pleasant enough town, full of cafes, bars, souvenir shops and restaurants. Nearby there are sandy beaches and unremitting sunshine. All around is a parched barren landscape filled with the rubbish from towns such as this, which seems to be scattered along all the roadsides or dumped in fields. There seems little point in hiring a car just to drive around from one tourist resort to another. The coast is pretty, with island stacks and arches between little sandy beaches, but to get there means walking through the heat to then bake and get bored on the beach. Despite what the guidebooks say, buses between resorts never connect up, and we would have enough within 30 minutes of arriving in most of the resorts along the coast here, which are just apartment blocks and souvenir shops. We actually said yesterday that we'd like to go home today if we could. So far it's been good, but a week of this won't be fun. [...] At least our accommodation is within a real local environment and the lady is really nice [...].
We discovered that yesterday was the day of international tourism, which was something that was being taken very seriously in Lagos with a special guided tour of the sites of interest in the town. We turned up for it and were the only English people there, despite the town swarming with them. There were around 20 Germans and a few Spanish. The tour was given in English, and the Germans managed to follow without difficulty. It says a lot for your average English traveller I think – we should be ashamed of ourselves. Our guide was a charming young Portuguese girl called Isabella. Her English was excellent and very attractively phrased. She took us to the museum full of archaeological exhibits of Roman, pre-Poman and Moorish artefacts, an ethnographic room with information on the local fishing industry – mainly sardine fishing – and agriculture, a model of an imaginary Algarve village, a room of religious objects, tiles, statues, a picture gallery of the works of local artists, a cabinet of pickled foetuses and similar curiosities, such as a stuffed animal with seven legs, also a collection of coins from around the world. Then we visited the interior of the church by our balcony. It is now a national monument and is entirely covered in blue and white Portuguese tiles and huge carved wooden screens and altar, all covered in gold leaf and full of bearded pink cherubs. There are eight wall paintings depicting the miracles of Saint Anthony, talking to fishes and fixing back the chopped off foot of a mad axeman. We then went to the 16th century fort with a chapel to Saint Barbara and a couple of art and photo galleries. There were maps, plans and navigation charts representing the importance of Lagos in the Portuguese voyages of discovery under the influence of Henry the Navigator, the youngest son of the king of Portugal, who died in 1460. There is an important statue to him on the seafront as there is to Gil Eannes, the first navigator to pass beyond Cape Bojador in 1434, confirming to the Portuguese that the world was not flat, thus encouraging them to take the world lead in maritime exploration and navigation. The fort gives excellent views out to sea across to the harbour area and the river estuary as well as the long, sandy beaches for which Lagos is famous.
Walking back to town we passed the old slave market where, travellers helped finance their exploration by bringing back African slaves to sell here. At first they were captured by force but later purchased from African tribal \hiefs who would sell off prisoners they captured in fights with rival African tribes. Other nations started to bring back slaves following the example of Portugal and it was estimated at his peak during the 18th century between seven and ten million slaves were shipped out of Africa. Destroyed most of the town indeed most of the towns in Southern Portugal. That, coupled with the fact that Portugal drove out the moors more rapidly than Spain managed to, has meant there is far less evidence of the North African influence here. Earth tremors here are very common though the last major one was in the 1960s. The sky had misted over a little by the time the tour ended and we'd all been given little packs of beautifully wrapped marzipan fruits and figs as a friendship gift for showing an interest in the country's culture. Where we were really touched; the nice things always outweigh the less agreeable things like cover charges. We decided that, as we have to walk everywhere, now will be a wise time to walk the three kilometres out to the Ponto de Piedade, a noted beauty spot. It was worth the walk but we were pretty exhausted when we got back. It is a sandy scrub-covered headland protruding south of Lagos with excellent views in either direction along the coast with its many sandstone aches and stacks. The cliffs themselves are twisted and contorted by weathering and is impossible to walk along them was ravines in the friable sandstone have developed by water and erosion, leaving very deep chasms between which the walker has to thread his way.
28 September 2002 continued
It is now dark. Ian has gone out to get us some money while I clear up after our supper on the balcony as the sunset in a scarlet sky.
Today has greatly improved our view of this corner of Portugal. Maybe we have at last learned to relax and take things at face value. Mind you, we have not done a great deal. It was misty and clammy this morning until about 10:00 a.m. so we sat in the fog on the balcony, eating figs and yogurt and writing up the diary. One of the most useful things we have brought with us this holiday is the portable device for heating water plus an adaptor plug and lots of Earl Grey tea bags. Wonderful for breakfast and soothing away colds.
Ian has just returned with money and asked the lady if we can stay two more nights. She then invited us up onto her roof to explain the layout of the town and to introduce us to her two Persian mix cats with blue eyes. I suspect they are the ones that sing to us at night from the roof, but they are very nice and friendly. The lady got quite chatty and explained about belonging to the local history society of Lagos and that she is a dressmaker by trade. We told her we had been on the historical tour of the town yesterday and had watched the folk dancing. Considering we don't actually speak either Portuguese or Spanish, we all got along famously. For us it is such a bonus to our holiday.
Today has been spent around town. First we wandered up above the town away from the tourist parts. There are lovely clean streets of little old houses and the remains of an old church where Henry the Navigator is buried. Above the town is a sports area and swimming pool with shady palm trees and views out across the bay of sparkling blue sea. Then we bought picnic things: salmon paté, brown bread with sunflower seeds, olives, grapes and a huge peach to share, plus a bottle of water. We sat on the bench under date palms beside the harbour teaming with shoals of small fish, sardines perhaps. Nearby a couple of old men made a lovely jolly racket with a mouth organ and drum playing the same tune endlessly but with such vigour and enthusiasm we gave them 50 cents to keep going. Meanwhile luxury yachts and little fishing boats moved up and down between the river mouth and the open sea. At one point we watched a reproduction of one of the old slave trading sailing ships, a caravel, make its way out to see and raise its sails as it set off for the horizon and a voyage of discovery. It was called Bõa Esperanza or Good Hope.
After lunch we wandered on around the marina in the baking sun. I discovered a free toilet, spotlessly clean but very odd. I have never in my life seen loos with glass doors before! They were opaque, it's true, but not sufficiently so by any means. Turning away one's gaze from the doors out of respect, one encountered a glass mirror the length of the room, so you still ended up seeing pretty well all that was happening in the loos. There were several English ladies who also found it very odd and amusing, and everyone good-naturedly made the best of it. We then discovered the railway station and checked out where we could reach by train. Not many journeys linked up however and we would have had trouble getting back. We had a coffee on a windy terrace overlooking the marina, which was lovely. Then we set off across an arid wasteland of warehouses where seafoods are processed and sold, either alive or frozen, to the hotel trade. Eventually we found our way to the beach, an endless rim of pale fine sand, sprinkled with pretty seashells all along the bay and gentle waves breaking onto the beach where sea birds ran along the waterline searching for seafood. It is easy to see why families choose to come here; there is virtually guaranteed sunshine and beautiful clean beaches with safe bathing in tepid, limpid water. If the rest of Portugal were as clean as its beaches, it would really have much to be proud of. Lagos is actually very clean and well kept, without any graffiti, pretty tiled streets with lovely designs worked into the tessellations: dolphins, octopuses, geometric shapes, all in natural stones in black or white cut into irregular tessera about two inches square, they are excellent. The buildings are rendered in white, lemon or pink and are clean and well cared for.
To my amazement Ian took off his shoes and socks, rolled up his trouser legs and positively scampered down to the beach to paddle. In my bright multi-coloured sun hat – he had lost his in Faro - and dark sunglasses he almost looked like everyone else except they had swimwear or shorts. Still, it is practically a first in our married lives. He kept going back to paddle again and even took off his t-shirt. The rest of the time he snoozeed on the sand or made a model of someone lying face down on the sand which caused some interest among some Portuguese kids who wanted to jump on it. I got pretty wet wading out to look at a shoal of sardines swimming up just a few feet from the shore. I walked right up to them and they simply continued swimming around me. Tomorrow I'm taking our swimming things out with us.
Eventually we returned to the town, crossing the river by little ferry boat to avoid the walk past the fish processing area. Then to the bus station to work out a plan for tomorrow. We also checked on possible car hire but to have it from tomorrow and leave it at Faro airport on Saturday morning would cost about £160. That's a lot of bus rides and even a few taxis, so I think we'll have to make do without unless we can find somewhere cheaper, maybe for three days only. At the supermarket we bought bread, water, and wine plus some items for a salad supper on our balcony.
We have spent a pleasant evening away from the tourist centre. It's Saturday night so no doubt even here it will be noisy tonight. At the moment though the only sound is of a cicada rasping away.
Sunday 29 September 2002.
After a reasonably peaceful night we awoke at 7:00 a.m. and by 8:15 were at the bus station in town to catch the early bus to Albufeira. Our host was still asleep as we crept out, unlooking the door into the street and scuttling off through the silent and deserted alleys, a lot quieter at 8:00 a.m. on a Sunday than it was at 4:00 a. m. when the Saturday night clubs turned out. It was like having our own personal taxi as far as Portimão. I think it's because the time tables are so fiendishly complicated that even the Portuguese are nervous to go anywhere for fear of not being able to sort out a connection back. The journey was along the coast and more pleasant than the motorway route we've taken between Seville and Lagos. There still remained a horrendous amount of roadside rubbish however. By 9:20 we reached the main road above Albufeira and were thrown off as the bus continued towards Faro. It was miles down into town and we were seriously worried about walking back up in the afternoon sun.
However when we'd reached the town a really helpful lass in the bus office told us there is a free shuttle bus up and down which we had somehow missed. My cold has come out as I was absolutely choking at the bus journey and worried how I would cope with the day. I fantasized about a cooked English breakfast and a mug of coffee, just just what my system yearned for. Well, it transpired we had come to the right place. The town centre was swarming with English, Dutch and German tourists, and we had an enormous choice of places where we could have a full English breakfast or a Dutch uitsmijter for four euros. Feeling highly embarrassed, we joined lots of other English couples or families at a table with red check tablecloths with ketchups and brown sauce already waiting, and ordered two eggs ,sausage, bacon, baked beans, tomato and toast with a couple of coffees. Ian did try it in Portuguese, but the waiter was having none of it. “It's all the same, you come here, that's what you get, it’s all we do” we were told. It was very pleasant, I have to admit. Just what my system wanted and I felt wonderful afterwards. All around us everyone was English, even calling the waiter “son”. I wonder what they made of it. I suppose they've all been to England on training courses, they were certainly excellent. It seems visitors are shipped in on package tours from Faro and spend a blissful couple of weeks living on all day breakfast, Sunday roasts, fish and chips and endless supplies of beer or cocktails with names like “orgasm”, “barman's Delight”, “sex on the beach” and even “blow job”. Fancy asking a waiter for an orgasm! There was specially imported beer for the Germans and the supermarkets were full of German rye bread, Sauerkraut and Bockwurst. For the Dutch there were Appelkooken and the Dutch football match on large screen tv. All in all, an amazing experience to see what it is everyone goes for when they arrive for a holiday abroad. By the look of the fried bodies on the beach, it's a sun tan followed by all the food they eat at home. The golden sandy beach was full of bronzed bodies, many very corpulent and some young and sexy. Ian is now sunburned, having spent too long in the sun sitting watching the topless sunbathers. The waves are enormous, not good for swimming and most folk weren't really interested in the sea, just the beach and the water line. Ian paddled, even donning his swimming shorts, but didn't get wet above the his knees. I did go in and spent most of my time being hurled about by the breaking waves, hurtled shoreward beneath the foaming crest of a breaker. Being whiter than everyone else on the beach, we were beginning to burn so after an hour or so we left the beach with its corpulent Brits and Germans mostly resembling lobsters and many of them smoking - let's see which form of cancer gets us first lung or skin.
Back on the quay by the fishermen's beach under a shady canopy a timed chess tournament was taking place. We spent a while enjoying the shade and watching some fifteen simultaneous games taking place.
From our balcony we have a roofscape view of the town with many curious chimneys I found a postcard today illustrating several different styles which seem to be of Moorish design.
Monday 30 September 2002.
Our landlady was still abed when we left this morning to catch the bus to Cabo de São Vicente (Cape St Vincent), a lonely headland at the far southwest corner of Europe, the last land to be seen by Portuguese adventurers as they left home to discover new lands, and also the first to be seen on their return. It has an aura about it, despite the car park and the tourists buying Bockwurst, churros, lager, t-shirts and woolly jumpers - it gets quite cold and windy on the exposed headland. Before boarding the bus at 10:00 a.m. we explored some of the narrow back streets of Lagos which is a very pleasant town, quite chic and very clean. We came across a lovely old church where mass was being celebrated. The walls were tiled, as is the tradition, but otherwise the large church was simply decorated with bare boards for flooring, ostentatious church furniture. It was generally very pleasant, surrounded outside by cactuses and geraniums. All the chimneys of the old town are ornate and we have decided it's probably to prevent birds nesting in them. Storks are very common here and love rooftops.
The bus was completely packed with British and German tourists mainly German. The countryside is far better cared for west of Lagos, and with the Monchique hills in the distance is quite attractive. There are very few trees, and little in the way of vegetation, a few vegetable plots with pumpkins, a few vineyards, cactuses galore and huge things with serrated leaves; we think they are aloe plants with green fruits like badly developed small bananas, which must be aloes of course. We may be completely wrong but we saw an advert for aloe vera and it had one of these cactuses on it. There are no animals to be seen in the countryside to speak of. I saw a few miserable horses standing in grey fields with nothing living that they could eat. Ian says he saw a pig but it was in a yard. As we neared Sagres the countryside appeared barren and deserted with low scrubland like Dartmoor at times but far less pretty. There was still the sandy dry soil, full of rocks and fossils, that make it all so unattractive, still too the horrid rubbish right along the roadside. How can a nation be so regardless of how ugly it is?
Beyond Sagres the road runs for six kilometers out to the Headland of Saint Vincent with its fort, captured by Sir Francis Drake in 1587, and a lighthouse surrounded by sea on three sides. Today there was a gentle breeze and cloudy sunshine but it must be very desolate and windswept in winter.
The cliff terrain is the hardest we have ever encounter to walk on. It is limestone but totally contorted and twisted on its end so the ground is just strips of limestone rock and you have to step from one to the next with a severe risk of twisted ankles if you miss your footing. We had intended walking the six kilometres back to Sagres but it will be quite impossible on such inhospitable terrain, so we caught the bus back an hour and a half later, which gave us ample time to admire the headland with its offshore islands and flat topped cliffs falling vertically down into the sea which surged in a froth of white foam at their base. Back in Sagres we went down to the harbour to picnic. There is not about to see or do at Sagres itself but we walked up onto the south east headland across scrubby cliffs with heather, dried up succulents and huge woody cactuses, crossed by stony yellow footpaths with spectacular views along the coast in either direction. We walked around the bay with its pretty yellow beach and out to the south west headland, cut off by the fort of Sagres, also captured by Sir Francis Drake. The fort is forbidding and looks more exciting outside than within. We paid our three euros each and were able to explore the rest of the headland as well as the fort itself with its well preserved battlements and the huge navigation aid in the courtyard, discovered in recent times. This is a vast compass rose and is believed to have been used in training early navigators. Prince Henry the Navigator is said to have founded a navigational “think tank” at the fort. He also died somewhere at Sagres in 1460. The fort was interesting but the views were wonderful along the coast and back across the cliffs and moorland to the hills beyond. There were a couple of fenced of areas near the tip called “fumar”. As we approached we could hear the roar of the sea. I imagine the roof of a limestone cave collapsed some way inland from the mouth, leaving a deep hole in the cliff top down to the sea below. We couldn't see the sea, only hear it, and were too nervous to crawl to the edge and peer over.
