Felizchoro Albufeira

... Luz for the last 40 years! Dinner is grilled sardines, garlic bread, calamari and BBQed pork steaks and chicken drumsticks. All washed down with some fine vinho verde.

18 Nov
Our last day on the Algarve B4 we head for a couple of nights in Granada, which was the last bastion of Islam in Spain. As part of our visit there, we hope to see the Alhambra and some of the Sierra Nevada. Then itºll be onwards to hook up with Annabelleºs folks ...

... have proved very difficult, hence we decided to move on. We continued to hug the coastline checking out the waves as we went. Nothing tempted us to jump in (the weather being poor also), however the coastline proved absolutely stunning between Odeceixe and our next destination Lagos. We were continually overwhelmed by the rugged beauty of the coastline coupled with the power of the ocean; we have some wonderful images which we will add to this blog ...

Over the last couple days I've watched my shaky plan fall around me. I don't really know where to go next, and surprise bills are depleting my meager funds. Thankfully I'm stranded in Southern Portugal, its cheap and beautiful, indeed there are less desirable places to be stranded.

I decide to join a group of young kiwis heading to Lagos; partly for the social aspect, partly because I would like to see more of the coast. Faro ...

... arrives, probably in an hour or two.

Now I'm feeling a little remote. I'm pretty good at making the best of a situation, and dealing with the resources I have. As I haven't eaten yet today, I search a few of the nearby gardens for a bit of fruit to tide me over. Under the cover of early morning light I find a mature pomegranate tree loaded with fruit. I grab 5 of the plumpest fruits I can find and wander ...

An excursion to Lagos’s Marina followed by a boat trip to Ponta de Sagres (The most western point of Europe, from where the Portuguese sailors started the discovery of new worlds) will allow to enjoy the
natural beauty of the rocks, especially the famous and most impressive caves of Ponta da Piedade, wild beaches and the sea waves on the cliffs along the coast and also some of the ‘highlights ...

... it was pretty tame until one of the toreadors almost got trampled by one of the bulls, the dude was lucky they dulled the tip of the bulls horns.


http://picasaweb.google.com /Jonny.D.Lawrence/20091016Albufeira?aut hkey=Gv1sRgCImA4oCXitDO5AE&feat=dir ectlink

... tons of mussels on the bottom, also not fun. The road to get to this lagoon was really sketchy, there's a video in the link below so you can see for yourself.

http://picasaweb.googl e.com/Jonny.D.Lawrence/20091012Alvor?au thkey=Gv1sRgCN_Jy47QxsiTwAE&feat=di rectlink

De ooievaars verzamelden zich, een paar honderd meter van onze boot, voor vertrek naar Afrika. Het waren er honderden. Nog wat ver weg voor de video, maar een prachtig gezicht door de verrekijker.
Weer een stukje film met dolfijnen rond de boot, op weg van Sines naar Lagos ...

The west and south coast of Portugal is pretty much a long stretch of beaches surrounded and separated by huge red cliffs and you can get from one beach to another by crawling through caves in the cliffs (I also think that's where the bums sleep at night...) We did some surfing at a small secluded beach that I had been to 4 years ago with my family. We’re ...

... Evora, all on its own in a great big empty plain. What a contract between the arrow-straight Roman roads and the modern twists and turns. Crossing into (over) the Asturias district of Spain there was still snow down at the bottoms of the deep valleys and on the north-facing slopes. The area looks untouched. I was not surprised to read once that this area is thought by many anthropologists to have been one of the last areas of Neanderthal populations. Someone I am sure has also ...