Two years in Portugal

We celebrated the beginning of our third year in Portugal on the 27th of February and spent the first few months of the year enjoying the improvements that we had made to heating water for the house, including the underfloor heating.

It didn't take long to figure out once the electrical bill started climbing, what we had saved with the wood-burning kitchen stove vs what winter would cost in the future with the new electrical systems (stove and heat pump).  The firewood increased to €185 per tonne (approximately half a cord) last year so the 6 tonnes (3 cords) would have cost €955 this year.  As the electrical bills came in it became apparent that we were not going to be saving much even with the efficient heat pump (€1500 between October and April) so we will have to accelerate getting the solar panels installed.

Since I last posted we took a trip to England

London, for Thanksgiving?  American traditions

in November to celebrate Thanksgiving with three of our children (Matt was planning to join us for Christmas in Portugal).   

Thanksgiving is our favorite holiday

 

Back in Portugal, we are part of an informal hiking group, and enjoyed a few hikes in October and November before the weather got consistently rainy.  There are plenty of really nice walks within a short distance of us, some along the coastline and others further inland. 

Lagging behind to record the hike

Our group takes turns to lead walks and we've led two so far since we joined.

In December we had a visit from Nick and his girlfriend Vanessa.  We spent a couple of days in Lisbon where we walked to a few Christmas Markets and visited a design museum.

Christmas Market at Parque Eduardo VII

  We picked Matt up at Lisbon's airport and traveled further north to Nazaré 

Nazaré lighthouse and waves

where we got to see surfers being pulled into the gigantic waves.  

Just after releasing the tow rope

Back in the Algarve we were invited to celebrate a wonderful Christmas day with our Scandinavian neighbors who sang entertaining songs each time a toast was made. 

A Scandinavian Christmas in the Algarve

As the rains came we hunkered down, spending time on personal projects at home, interspersed with hikes and alternate jam sessions with two guitarists I have been playing with.

Playing with Marcus

 Emma and Jess also came to spend a few days with us in March and the sunny weather showed up for them.

At the Alte waterfall

Our Portuguese classes continue.  We have finished the course work for A2 - which is shorthand for basic verbal and written literacy but unfortunately is not enough to really have a good conversation with a native speaker, unless they are very patient and speak slowly.  But we are determined to keep working at it and spend almost every morning with some activity like crosswords, conjugation exercises or a little reading.

We have planned two trips for this year.  The first to Albuquerque, New Mexico to meet Matt and his partner and the second to Namibia to travel inland into the game reserves, going up to Etosha Pan and the Okavango swamps.

 Since we have already left for the USA I'll have an update on the trip there fairly soon.

 

Portugal: Full circle in the Algarve

We returned to Lagos only to discover that Nazaré experienced some massive waves on the weekend immediately after we left.  I guess it might be necessary to block off some time to make the trip up there next fall when we know there are big swells coming.

I spent the week after we returned watching the "100 ft wave" series on TV during breaks before and after work.  The series does a good job of capturing the personalities of the regulars at these events and how their journeys evolved from the early days of experimentation with the huge waves there, up to last year.

Back in Lagos we had some business to attend to.  We have to open a bank account which involves a few steps that we had prepared for based on several Facebook groups for expats moving to Portugal.  The steps are probably quite a bit more intense for non-EU residents but it was interesting to participate in the generating of many pages of documents that we had to sign.  We also had to produce utility/account statements that prove our residence in the USA.  Fortunately we still have some utilities that send us bills that we could use for this.

In Portugal (and maybe all of the EU) banks make no bones about making money off you.  In the USA bank accounts charge minimum or no fees for the account itself - making money from having your money rather than making you pay for the privilege.  In Portugal you pay around 5-7 Euros every month for the account with extra fees if you want a credit card or a second debit card.

We will have to make provision to transfer money into this account regularly because this will be used to pay for the utilities for the house once we have the deed.

In the map above, the heart shows the location of our new house.  It is in a small hamlet between Silves and a town called São Bartholomeu de Messines, almost exactly half-way between Faro and the west coast and a few minutes drive from the main rail-line between Lisbon and Faro.  The closest beach is a 30min drive on backroads directly south in Albufeira.  Silves (pronounced Seelvsh - and rhymes with "peel") is 15min drive away.

The process to buy the house is moving along - we have paid the deposit and the promissory note has been signed which puts both parties into a contract whereby we'll have to pay a considerable penalty if either of us renege on the deal.  We would lose our deposit or the seller would have to pay us double the deposit depending on who pulls out of the contract.  The actual signing of the deed (closing) will be left to a lawyer who will wait for an inspection by the realtor of the property (with photo and video sent to us for review) and she will keep the keys for us for when we return.

During the wait for the promissory to be signed I reached out to our attorney to find out what the proper address was for our new home.  We had become aware of a problem with mail and deliveries in Portugal because there are often houses and streets that are not named and google maps is not reliable.  In some cases the numbering convention for the street has changed in the last couple of years from one format to another and so you might end up at a location that has a wildly different street number from what you entered in the search.

So you can imagine my confusion when I entered our new address and google maps confidently highlighted a different location than the one we had visited and was listed on the realtor's web site.

After an email exchange with our attorney we understood that the postal code/address we had been given corresponded to the whole hamlet which has a collection of post boxes at the main intersection in its middle.

The house that google reported belonged to the postal code has a custom listing in google maps - probably put there by the current owner, and which includes a phone number.  My guess is that they rent it out to visitors every now and again and wanted to help them with directions.

So I phoned the number.  

Their names were pretty clearly English and after introducing myself, we had a brief and friendly conversation.  I asked him what the probability was that we were buying their house instead of the one listed by the realtor which got us both laughing about street addresses and maps.  After we'd chatted a bit about the new house, which he knows well, he said:  "So you have a South African accent?" and I said, "Yes and you sound like you are from England?" which brought back an immediate: "No man, Durban!"  I suppose the Natal accent is the closest to what they call received pronunciation in South Africa but I was a little disappointed that I didn't pick it up right away.  He immediately invited us to stop by anytime we like to say "hi" and we'll be doing that when we move in properly.

It is not unusual to come across South Africans here.  He has lived here since 1986 which was long before we even imagined we might go off as travelers to distant countries for work and then for retirement.  If you search for the Algarve on YouTube you will come across a South African (Nick Robinson) who has lived here for a couple of decades and fills his episodes by describing places and processes related to moving and living in the Algarve.  His channel is called Algarve Addicts.

So our next hurdle is to get a visa for residence which we will have to apply for as soon as we get back to Boston next week.  Anne will apply for the non-lucrative retirement visa and once she has it we will start working on a reunification visa for me to join her.  We might have to juggle with how much time we spend in Portugal.  Once Anne has her residential visa she has to spend a few days more than six months in Portugal every year.  Until I have a residence visa I can't spend more than 90 days in every six month period.   There is a chance that my visa will be processed before this presents a problem for us.

So after a total of 6 months in Portugal we returned to some of the scenery near Lagos on a walk to Ponta da Piedade - a headland with amazing rock formations formed by the relatively soft sandstone being eroded by waves and collapsed walls.

Since our first visit in April 2022 there have been additional wooden boardwalks constructed to try to discourage walking on footpaths really close to the potentially treacherous cliff edges.

 

There are a few locations along the coast near Lagos between Albufeira and Luz where tour companies bring tourists in boats and on kayaks to explore the inlets and caves in the cliffs.

 

A nice scenic end to our second long stay in Portugal and completing a loop in the Algarve with another series of photographs of those impressive cliffs.

 

Portugal: Carrapateira, Monchique and the convent

I figured when we packed up everything and decided to set off together that I'd take some strain with not having a "home".  To be honest when we went on vacation in the past after two weeks I was ready for my own bed so I really wasn't sure how I'd hold up for a longer jaunt.  Now there really isn't a bed somewhere that I can long for and for now that's ok.

To help with "making it home" Anne brought a few things that reminded us of our past homes and I decided that I'd bring our Roku along so we could keep watching some of the shows that we'd been watching in October.

It is a little tiring and annoying to move every couple of weeks and we've learned quite a bit about how to keep rolling with this.  I was adamant that I'd bring everything I needed in two carry on bags (a overhead and under-seat) but Anne will quickly point out that some of my stuff is in the 2 large suitcases that we check in on the flights and drag along between locations.

My work setup is a laptop on a light fold-up stand (it folds to the size of a small pencil case) with a second small flat monitor and a small keyboard and mouse.  It is pretty important that this setup is something that I can comfortably use for work because I'm at it for 8 - 10 hours a day and occasionally more.  Some of these hours are really late at night depending on where we are staying.  I was also adamant that I would work my regular hours.

I have been stopped a few times because of all the electronics that I had with me.  We have a small battery powered CO2 detector and I brought a small wireless router for the roku and to connect seamlessly back to the USA.  After the second time having to unpack everything to show the little electronic bits I have been putting them into a bag in one of the big suitcases along with some toiletries and my portable hair and beard trimmer.

Not that the hair trimmer has seen much use.  I have ignored cutting my hair since more or less the middle of COVID and it is now quite comfortable down to my shoulders.

When we arrive at a new AirBnb I unpack the small packing cubes I use to organize my clothing and then set up my workstation, the little wireless router and the roku.  Our iphones, computers and Anne's tablet don't have to be reconfigured every time because we still use the wireless hotspot that I had at our home in Essex.

In the Europe and UK timezones I get up at 7:30am (2:30am EDT), read the news and do our duolingo lesson and the wordle (a friendly competition each morning with Anne to see who does it in the least steps) and then we are free to explore until 1pm (8an EDT) when I get myself set up - take care of any admin on the computer and get my head ready for work.  5pm local coincides with lunchtime in the US.

I have left my computer's date and time on EDT because it was getting too confusing to do the timezone conversion everytime a meeting was announced or planned.  The net effect is that once I get zoned into work I often look up at 4pm EDT surprised to see it is dark outside.  Its 9pm local time!  Work ends at 10pm and I'm in bed by 11:30pm.

Our stop in Carrapateira in the Aljezur region has been almost two weeks and is our penultimate stop.  We'll be in Lisbon for two weeks before returning to the US for the rest of May.

Carrapateira is tiny with a single small shop and a few restaurants but with two surf shops.  The town is also on the Rota Vicentina (Fisherman's trail) and you often see hikers on the beach coming off the trail hot and exhausted or in the restaurants.

Hiker snacking after a swim

Our favorite restaurant was Alecrim - we ended up going there for lunch enough times to work through their main meal menu once and a bit.  The chef is Nepalese and the dahl that he makes is really tasty, but so is everything else.

Bacalhau à Brás is a meal with potatoes, egg and cod and I took a photo of it to send to our friend in Sanatarem who I think served this to us when we visited her and her husband.  It is delicious.

There is plenty of hiking around this town and we took a walk up on to the cliffs to the south of the local beach. 

There are landmark metal sculptures of letters with carved inscriptions on their backs describing something significant about the area around and we walked from the letter C to the letter E on one of our mornings.

Monchique is the highest mountain in Portugal and the town Monchique is just below the top of the mountain.  The road to the town from where we were staying was pretty narrow and winding with some gaping drops on the one side along parts of the routes.  I found myself wondering how some of the houses built near these cliffs are going to hold up against the erosion that will inevitably weaken their foundations. 

When we got close to the town we came across this very impressive granite quarry - it is incredible to see how the granite has been hewn out of the mountain leaving stunningly vertical cliffs in the cavity that has been created by cutting and extraction of the granite blocks.

The town is quaint, although it has a reputation of getting very hot in the summer, but our visit there was really comfortable with a cool breeze blowing.

The views from the mirador are really beautiful and the town has the characteristic narrow streets lined with terraced houses.

We visited two interesting places, the first an eccentric ceramicist who makes unusual figures of humans, animals and insects many of which are installed in the water feature at the centre of the town.  The gallery is high on the side of the mountain and is quite enchanting.

We spent some time walking in the garden and examining the caricatured creatures before going back down to the center

where I ordered a town specialty Asadura de Porco Preta (black pork roast) which a plateful of cut up roasted pork strips with fries and a salad.  Pigs are farmed here so I guess this is why it is a town specialty.

After lunch we hiked up the side of the mountain to an old convent.  We had read that people are squatting there and assumed that we would not be able to go in.

Indeed there were markings on the doors and walls all around the deteriorating building that said "Familia" and "Private".  

I'm not sure what prompted me to ask a man sitting on a rock near the front entrance whether the convent was closed (I used the Spanish word "cerrada" with some hand signs) - and he promptly got up and beckoned for us to follow him.  I said "no tengo dinero" (I don't have money) again relying on Spanish and he shook his head and said "no problema".

Of course we were immediately on high alert because he was leading us along a long and winding path around the back of the convent but for some reason I felt ok to follow him - deciding that if things started to get dodgy we'd have to make a plan

He pulled a gate open and then a double door leading in to the convent which was a cavernous hall with no roof and a couple of trees growing in it and then he locked the door behind us!

I was wondering if there were a gang of people who would fleece us once we were inside, but it was deserted.  Afterwards Anne told me she was imagining how she would defend us with her hiking poles.

He gestured to different rooms for me to see and made hand signs to take photos before telling us that the convent had been there since the 1400s.

We discovered afterwards in a write-up that the property is owned by a person local to the town and that he is quite happy for people to go in there and get a tour at no charge.  We still don't know who the person is who let us in but he was kind and friendly and I wish I had had some spare change for him.

We took a leisurely drive back on the other main road to Monchique - to Portimao - a busy town just north of Lagos but turned off on the highway to bring us back to our AirBnb.

I'm constantly evaluating these towns and the properties against the "could I live here" metric.  Anne would say my bar is too low because I have often told her that I could live in a box but I do find it interesting to see what is on offer in the realtors' windows.

Real estate office behind Anne at the restaurant

For the first time since getting here the realtors' window didn't feature large beautiful homes of over $1 million but rather featured many dilapidated houses, some on large farms for under $100 000.  One that struck my eye was a farm of over 1000m2 with three homes on it for $450 000.  A little pricey and of course got me wondering if these houses had permits to be fixed up.  From the look of it one of the 3 houses was in reasonably good shape but the other two were a mess.

We'll be back in the area in a few months with a more critical eye, looking more seriously for a place that we can long to return to after a 2 week vacation somewhere.

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.

Portugal: Aljezur (or thereabouts)

Aljezur means "of islands" in Arabic and has been inhabited since pre-history (some evidence from 7000 BC) with nomadic tribes.  Settlements started in around 3000BC but the largest expansion of buildings started in the 10th Century with the Muslim occupation of Spain and Portugal.  The Moors ruled for around 500 years from the 10th Century until the region was taken from them by the Christians in 1249. The coastal towns in near Aljezur were plagued by pirates who attacked and kidnapped people to be sold as slaves in Algiers until as late as the 17th Century.

The landscape here is quite different from what we had seen as we traveled along the coast from Tavira and Lagos.  To the east of Aljezur, not far from the coast, is the Serra de Monchique which is a chain of mountains just under 1000m (3200ft) high and so the drive from Lagos to Aljezur included a fairly winding road which again reminded us of the landscape of the Eastern Cape in South Africa and the drive from the coast to Makhanda (which was known as Grahamstown when we lived there in the 1980s and 1990s).

The entire area is protected and we saw many more trees along the route.  We had decided to not take the main road from Lagos but rather to drive again to Sagres and then take the smaller road between Sagres and Aljezur.  The driving was a little hairy with the narrow and twisty road with a speed limit of 90km/h (55mph), which felt a little fast for the road.

Our week in Aljezur is another house-sit.  The home is actually a little west of Aljezur (which is built in a valley) up on the hills in a settlement called Vale da Telha that was founded in 1977.   The area has suffered from problems caused by the fact that it is built in a nature reserve and with little infrastructure for services.  As a result the area was described as "chaotic and without infrastructure" by the mayor of Aljezur in 2021.  A development plan is underway to set in motion the creation of services for the area.

From google maps it looks like a very modern street plan with a grid, lots of cul-de-sacs and rotaries and so I imagined that we'd see very modern houses filling the area.  

To the contrary the area is underdeveloped with a number of large and expensive houses interspersed with empty plots, abandoned construction and small single-story houses and the streets are in fairly rough shape.  Not terrible, just obviously not in the rotation for regular repaving when they need it.

Our hosts told us that the street lights were a new addition (they have been living here for some time) and that although there are buses that run regularly they have only recently installed bus stops.

A number of British and European immigrants have moved to this area and there has been pressure to get the services upgraded on the strength of their tax contribution to the region and it appears that the town of Aljezur has been working on this for some years.

The entire settlement and surrounds appears to be built on sea sand.  Walking paths are all loose sea sand with thriving vegetation (bushes and grasses) on either side.

House-sitting requires some adjustments to our routine.  This one had two sweet older dogs that we were warned could wander off on our walks and a black and white cat who is pretty domesticated and two other cats who came to the house when the owners moved in but have since become more "outside" cats, returning occasionally for food.  We saw one of them once and another that came by regularly for food but came into the house with a great deal of trepidation.

We were told that the dogs would ask to sit on the couch with us and might try to get on the bed but we should not allow it.

So we settled down for our first night on the eve of Easter Sunday with the two dogs asleep on their beds, one on each side of our bed.

Anne (I might have mentioned) startles easily and once we were fast asleep the cat decided to jump onto her without warning.   She woke with a loud shriek that terrified the cat and the dog next to her instinctively went into attack mode.  The cat was gone from the room before it lost its life and Anne and I were left in a flight or fight stance with adrenaline raging through our bodies.  "What the hell just happened!?"

Anne settled back down and we started to laugh uncontrollably.  In a pause, I asked: "Did you remember to hide easter eggs for me?"  Which had us in fits of laughter again.

We didn't see the cat again that night and figured out a routine after that to make our nights less alarming without disrupting the dogs' and cat's routines too much.

House-sitting also has the advantage of getting you out to walk the dogs.  We explored some of the nature reserve that surrounds the settlement - including a 45min walk on a path that is regularly used for horse riding and then a longer walk to this magnificent beach that apparently is pretty hard to get to without a long hike. 

We thought that we saw a way to get down to it from the top of the cliff but we were already pretty exhausted from walking on the path from where we had parked.  So we have left that for another day.

The cliff looks deceptively easy in this panorama - it is too steep to go down

The town of Aljezur is packed with rows of apartment blocks well-suited to the summer holiday maker.  We visited the castle in the old town center  from which we had views of the landscape around and of the newer part of the town.

The streets and houses in the older center of town are as charming as in the other towns we've visited in the Algarve. 

Quite a few of the houses are in good shape.  

 

We wondered about driving up and down these narrow streets, some of which had tight turns and barely fit two cars abreast.

Some of them, built under the castle, have stunning views of the valley.  In this case overlooking the new town with the big supermarket in front of the rows of apartments.

There are two streams that converge at the town and it boasts a series of trails that you can walk.

The town is also on the path of the Rota Vicentina which is a 750km (466mi) long trail along the west coast of Portugal.  The trail also passes in the vicinity of our house-sit and was a feature of our twice-daily dog walking while we stayed there.

We visited an overlook near our house-sit that was once a Muslim fortification called the "Ribat of Arrifana".  It was built in 1130 under the direction of one of the prominent leaders in the Iberian Muslim occupied territory.  He was later assassinated after being accused of betraying Islam by followers of the Almohad movement, a powerful Berber dynasty that eventually ruled southern Iberia and the Algarve.  The ribat fell into disrepair after his death.   

In 2001 archeologists began to excavate the ruins.  There are fences around two of the areas that still show evidence of walls.

The views from this site are as impressive as any of the cliffs in the western part of the Algrave

including a massive rock that appears to have broken off from the cliff - and shows long straight lines of sediment that are now vertically oriented.

Not far from us is a beach on a fairly narrow road called Monte Clerigo with a couple of restaurants.  We took some time one morning to get coffee and cake and walk the beach.  

On one side are interesting rock formations with rock pools.  They look like they were the center of a meteor strike because they have radiating circular patterns with a bull's eye in the middle.

We are now six months into our travels.  We sold our house and boarded an airplane a few days later.

We'll be staying in Western Portugal for another few weeks and then onto more things.

I'm feeling more inclined to stay somewhere for few months because moving every two weeks is starting to wear a little thin.  I think we are getting closer to a series of more realistic experiments in experiencing living where we might eventually end up.