Portugal: Tango Juliet and Adonis

The default main road intersections in Portugal are rotaries and it took us a little time to figure out the polite way to use them while driving.

 Like in America, the person entering the rotary has to give way to anyone already in the rotary.  Drivers tend to use their indicators to signal their intent as they enter the rotary - a left indicator means that you don't intend to take the next exit and a right indicator means you're about to exit.  What's more, if there are two lanes in the rotary, the outer lane is reserved for cars that have just entered and will immediately exit the rotary.

Of course plenty of people don't know all of these rules so you might find yourself in the inner lane indicating that you will exit at the next exit only to be blocked by someone in the outer lane who fully intends to keep going around the rotary for an undefined number of exits.  Usually these people are tourists from countries who don't have many rotaries or countries where rules of the road are treated as rough guidelines rather than rules.

Anne and I found navigating through the rotaries a little tricky when we started driving around in the Algarve with the GPS.  I was concentrating on the road and had a heads up display on the dashboard that warned me of rotaries coming up but gave an imprecise view of which exit I had to take.  Soon Anne was telling me "go straight through" or "turn right" but when you have rotaries with 5 exits you have to be a little more precise so I suggested that Anne use the military co-ordinates on a watch-face to explain which exit to take once in the rotary.  I "mansplained" that your 6 is behind you ("watch my 6") and 12 o'clock is go straight through etc.  

It didn't take long before Anne starting calling me Tango Juliet and saying things like "take your 11, tango juliet" as we approached the next rotary.  It didn't help that I kept getting confused and having to go all the way around once more because I thought my 9 was my 3.

My cousin, Trevor and his wife and her sister-in-law (who is also looking at Portugal as a destination), met us for lunch at a cliff-side restaurant called Sitio do Forno not far from our Aljezur house-sit,

Everywhere you go here on the south west coast there are high, steep cliffs, many of which have these hidden beaches that are reachable via paths, stairways or roads with only a little parking available.  It reminds me each time what a nightmare it must be in the summer if you don't live within walking distance of the beaches.

After Aljezur we had to take a trip back to Faro to return our rental car.  We had decided to rent another car because the areas that we still want to see are more remote than a bus or Uber would take us.  I'm not even sure whether Uber works down in the Algarve like it did in Porto where it was a fairly cheap option for getting around.

We stayed in a little AirBnb for three nights in a less affluent part of a town called Quarteira which allowed us to go for morning walks on the beach and was close to the car rental place. 

An interesting feature of many homes in Portugal are these blinds - they are usually outside the window and get lowered down.  If you lower them completely they allow no light into the room and cut down on noise from outside.  In this AirBnb we lifted the blinds a little to allow some air in at night but the morning light coming through the gaps made for a good way to wake up.

Our brief stop in Faro also allowed us to visit two people who had unexpectedly reached out to us.  Both of them live in Quinta do Lago on the outskirts of the town of Almancil just north of Faro. 

The first was an ex-Rhodes university friend, Erik, who is living with his lovely family in a large resort.  It was very cool to catch up with him and to meet his wife and children.  They have had a pretty adventurous life - having met in England and then traveled extensively for a couple of years before settling down to live in Portugal.

The second, our son-in-law's aunt, has lived in France and now Portugal and has an incredible home in Almancil.  She is a painter and wildlife photographer and had some interesting stories to tell about her experiences.  

We took a drive to a nearby beach after spending the morning with her.  The beaches in the Algrave are so  long and almost empty at this time of year.

Most interesting for me has been to hear stories about the transition from wanting to move, to deciding where, and then making it happen.  There are so many hidden details to all of this and it reminds me somewhat of when we decided to leave South Africa in the early "aughts" (Americans call the 2000-2009 the "aughts" and the Brits call it the "noughties").  One of the things immediately apparent to me then was that the more resources you have, the more likely you would act on any second thoughts and bail on your move when things get tough.  Having fewer resources more or less commits you to your destination regardless of whether the choice was really the best one and ironically makes the move and transition easier because you have no choice but to work through all the problems in your new place.

So now, thinking of retiring somewhere closer to where our grandchildren are and within easy reach of our sons, puts Europe and England in contention, but where?  Having spent two years learning Spanish made it the obvious first choice but we have been persuaded to check out other places.  So here we are.

It's still too early to say what we think, to be honest.  We spent a little time in Spain last year and now a little more time in Portugal.  England is next and then, probably, a longer rental in one of these three areas for a few months to get more serious about where to go and what it will take to make the move.

Aljezur has really appealed to us - wild and fairly remote but only 30mins drive from Lagos by car (so within reach of facilities that we might need).  

After our house-sit in Aljezur we settled on a small town called Carrapateira in the southern most part of the Aljezur region, not far north of Sagres.  Our AirBnb is not more than a 5min walk from the beach.

Anne and I drove up north one morning of this week to visit a town called Odeceixe (pronounced "udd-sesh").   I know!  The relationship between how letters look and sound in Portuguese is confusing for us too.  We have learned that any word ending with an "s" is said with an "sh" and many vowels are dropped or combined to make a single syllable.  Learning Portuguese would be a really big task.

The beach in Odeceixe is described as one of the most beautiful beaches in Portugal.  The town is on a steep hillside and the beach is very broad and long, but is snuggled in a cove of high cliffs.

We saw a sign that announced that to the left of this beach is a naturist beach and after walking its length we came back to see that the tide was low enough for us to walk around to the almost deserted clothing-optional beach.  A single person way on the other side of the beach appeared to be enjoying the freedom it offered.

Anne and I took a quick dip au naturel before making our way back up for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the main beach.

The AirBnb we have for these two weeks is a short walk from a really wide beach.  The breeze is cool but the waves are impressive and Anne couldn't resist buying a body board. 

We can spend the morning walking on the beach until my start of the business day in the afternoon so this is a pretty good way to balance these two things.

On Sunday we saw two kite surfers moving across the water at high speed with their boards. 

A very strenuous activity in the stiff sea breeze.