Portugal mais uma vez (once again)

After Cornwall we took a train ride up to Manchester to see our friend, Stephen.  He lives in Sale, a stone's throw from the Manchester United stadium.

Steve treated us to good food, great conversation and a trip to a massive sculpture garden in Yorkshire, which is about an hour's drive from Manchester. 

We spent time walking in the gardens with his two lovely children and their partners. 

The grounds are extensive and Anne had her fill of the majestic ancient trees. 

Credit: Anne - one of her many photos of the giant trees

Steve drove us back via Sheffield to give us more scenery.  The countryside of England is very beautiful.

 

From Manchester we flew to Lisbon to spend 10 days with our two daughters and their families in Seixal - a town south of the river that separates Lisbon from the south.  We took some time to go to an art gallery in Lisbon and to visit a castle in the famous town of Sintra in the mountains north-west of Lisbon.

but most of the time we spent on a few beaches near to our AirBnb - one of which was particularly well suited to swimming despite fairly large waves breaking off shore.

We were still feeling pretty thrown by how much we liked the atmosphere and countryside of Cornwall, Devon and Yorkshire and had some hard thinking to do to decide between living in the frequent rain and damp with the short winter days of England and the sunny, mostly mild climate of Portugal.

The tradeoff is pretty miserable.  A place that you feel such a strong affinity with vs a place where the weather is mostly great and your life is calm and relaxed - but you are an alien and part of a group that is becoming increasingly problematic to the local population.

Of course there are plenty of other considerations - it is much more expensive in England and Portugal has this rough feel to it.  Sections of any town or street are a little run down or crumbling and the open areas during the summer are mostly dirt, not grass - like in the Kalahari.

A small river resort near the little town of Alte in the Algarve

 

House prices have climbed in Portugal to a level that seems to defy us finding something comfortable to live in - there are plenty of ruins selling for the price we are looking for and good homes are quite a bit above our limit.

on the market for 250 000 Euros

But we have started searching in earnest now, hoping to find an house that is an outlier - a gem or something that'll just do for us.  We hover somewhere between despair that we'll never figure this out and cheerful optimism that we might.  

Fortunately there are two of us and we tend to balance each other out.  One of us might be in the doldrums and get dragged out by the winds of optimism of the other or visa versa.

There is also plenty of paperwork and bureaucracy still ahead of us, the visa we are going to apply for requires that you have a property already or a 12 month rental in place.  Unfortunately most owners are happy for their houses to be available only for holiday makers in the summers and there are very few long term rentals to be had - and a mob of people trying to get them.  Even if we could persuade someone to rent to us they won't offer more that 6-8 months of rent when we actually need 12.

So the other option is to buy a house and then apply for the visa.  We found someone very knowledgeable who could help with assessing and buying houses in the Algarve, who would work with us to try to get a good deal.  He failed to impress though, having forgotten to mention, when he met us and persuaded us to stop communicating with other realtors, that he was leaving for two week's vacation the following day.  We waited to get started on the project with him and after not hearing from him on the 2nd day after he had said he'd be back, it dawned on us that his enthusiasm didn't match ours.  

I wonder if our budget is discouraging to someone like him - he stands to earn significantly less with a 2.5% commission on the much more expensive homes that are on the market in the Algarve.

Working with realtors is the pits.  You have to work with them with very little trust, knowing that the bottom line for them is pretty mercenary.  I imagine their sales training is like: find out what they can afford, get a rough idea of the characteristics of houses that they are looking for and then coax them to buy something about 20-30% more expensive than their limit from your portfolio even if it isn't a fit.  Oh and also if they ask about any details that matter greatly to them just give them a positive answer even if you know the answer is bad.  Who else sells like this?  I'm reminded of the father in the Roald Dahl book, "Matilda"

Trying to organize our viewing schedule and summary of properties

Our plan is to continue searching until the end of October.  Anne is doing most of the work and we need to schedule viewings in the mornings outside of my normal working hours.

If we haven't found a house by November we will need to find some other way of proving that we have at least 12 months secured rental in Portugal so that when we return to America we can start the process of applying for the visa from there.  It can take several months and even then, there are unknowns in terms of what documentation the embassy might require from us which might cause additional delays.

Our current AirBnb's have been in Faro and Olhão - they are pricey still because we are at the tail end of the summer season.  Hopefully we'll be able to find something cheaper for October.

We took a ride last weekend in a solar powered boat in amongst the small barrier islands that separate the sea from the land near Olhão.  

The wetlands formed by these barrier islands are home to a variety of bird species and it was a pleasure to motor around more or less silently and photograph some of the birds.  

Not far away from here are salt marshes that are an active sea salt mine and which attract a large number of flamingos at certain times of the year.  We saw them in March in Tavira and will no doubt see them again if we can manage to get permission to stay here for longer than 90 days in each 180 day period (the current visa constraints for US and UK passport holders).

The AirBnb in Olhão is right next to a nature reserve with a research station for sustainable fish farming where they are researching ways to replenish the dwindling fish population.  We took a walk around the natural park.  It is dry and warm and felt a lot like a walk in the veld near Kimberley.  There are two blinds on the property - one looking across the salty wetlands and the other over a depleted fresh water vernal pond. 

I imagine in the winter during high tide and when it rains the bird-life would be closer to the blind.

Here's hoping we are back here in the winter with a temporary residence permit and who knows, maybe even a house?