Portugal: Nasaré, waves, dogs and cats

When Anne joined Trusted House-sitters it seemed like a good way to justify our accommodation by looking after a house and animals for people who otherwise wouldn't be able to travel.

Some people kennel their animals, others have a neighbor take their pet or stop by to feed and let their animal out.  Some find someone who they can trust to house sit and give their animals a great deal more attention than a kennel or neighbor might.

The downsides of this option is that our stays are not usually long - maybe a week or 10 days at the most, aren't all in the same area and you really can't string them together to cover a whole long period.  For example in this trip we had to travel 3 and then 4 hours away from where we were based to do two house-sits in-between AirBnb rentals and a generous offer by my cousin to stay at their house while they are off adventuring with a friend in North Africa.

In each case these were in places we wanted to visit anyway so for the price of petrol we had accommodation and an opportunity to care for furry things.

You have to be a little careful when you volunteer to house-sit because some pets are extremely high maintenance and you need to be aware of the warning signs if you want to avoid really difficult sits.  Anne has this down to a fine art, making sure we limit applying to sits with large numbers of animals and looking for signs that their animal care routines are within tolerable limits.  For example a dog that barks at other dogs on walks is tolerable, but dogs that have to be kept separated in their house and walked separately might be a red flag for a relaxed house-sit.  

Our experiences have ranged from people who happily skip phone screening before accepting our offer to sit (or skip meeting us at their homes before leaving for vacation), to people who carefully vet us, interview us and take an hour or so to show us the routine with their animals.  Any of these approaches are fine, of course, and I suspect if we were looking for someone to care for an animal of ours we'd be on the more careful than carefree side of screening before we left them to house-sit.

On the whole our experience with house-sitting has been really good.  We have sat pets in Spain, New England, Cornwall and Portugal since we started traveling and have really enjoyed it.  In total over the last year we have done around 6 or 7 of these sits and they have almost all been great.

Sculpture depicting a legend involving a deer's fall over the cliff and the newer tradition of surfing

Our house-sit for this week is in the town of Nazaré about 75mi (122km) north of Lisbon (90min by car).  It took us close to 4 hrs to drive there from Lagos in the Algarve. 

View of the headland from our house-sit.  Whitewater is where the big waves form.

We have been looking after a little young dog and an older mid-sized dog.  The mid-sized dog is chill but the little one occasionally goes insane when it sees other dogs in the vicinity.  There are also two fairly chill cats in this household.  On the whole the younger dog is pretty manageable because she loves people so is very cute to be around.  The condominium is up on the hills outside of Nazaré and close to an isolated country road that we have been able to walk along every day without coming across any other people with a dog thus avoiding the "crazy dog on a leash" experience altogether.

We did take the older dog to the town beach one morning on a day that the younger dog was in doggy day-care and just avoided exposing the younger dog to other animals altogether.

Nazaré town and the town beach

 Nazaré has become really famous over the past 10-12 years as a location that has the biggest waves in the world.  The town has two beaches, Nazaré beach and North beach.  North beach is where the massive waves are, when they come.  Someone we met in Lagos who grew up in Nazaré told us that as a young girl her mother would not let her go to that beach because of their fear of the big waves and the backwash.

There is a unique undersea canyon just off a headland near the town, which channels the water.  On ideal days, when wind-driven swells and local currents arrive together with this up-welling of water you can get peaks in the ocean really close to the headland that reach heights of over 80ft.

What amazed me about this is the shape of the waves.  When you witness big waves from ocean storms you expect to see waves that are more or less of even height, but these are like peaked mountains.

This is the time of year that these mountainous waves usually arrive at Nazaré.  The highest ever surfed at Nazaré (so far) was in October 2020 with predictions that at some point in the future there will be a surfer who surfs a 100ft wave here.

Unfortunately during our stay the waves were a modest 12-15ft which is still a massive wave.  We would have loved to see larger waves but we only had a week and I think you either have to camp out here for the season or have weather maps that can predict the swell before it gets here.

 
I was amazed at how crowded the little fort was while we were there on the Saturday.  The waves were big enough to attract a couple of surfers, with their jet-ski teams, who briefly tried to surf.

A surfer on a wave - around 6 times the size of his crouched body

 I was particularly interested in finding the spot where the photographer was standing who took the iconic image of Sebastian Steudtner and to figure out what size zoom lens he had used to get some of the foreground of the fort into the image.  The fort in the foreground gives a sense of scale and distance, comparing the people on the roof of the fort with the tiny surfer on the massive wave.

200mm lens from the hill behind the fort

We were not disappointed at all.

In fact the only thing that was disappointing on the day was discovering that I don't much like Alheira, a Portuguese sausage made of a mixture of meats and breads that I boldly ordered for lunch.  The texture and taste both surprised me.

I guess you have to try something twice before being sure so I'll have to try visiting Nazaré again sometime (and maybe take another bite of an Alheira sausage as well).

Massachusetts - Marblehead (May/June)

I have joked about being boomer digital nomads because we have to go back to be closer to our home town in Massachusetts to do annual and semi-annual visits to doctors.

I expect if we applied enough thought to it we might have come up with an alternative plan, but for now we are just setting our annual checkup appointments to coincide with when we expect to be there.  Most of these appointments are in December but Anne and I both had something set up for May so there we were.

Portugal rotary sculpture: metaphor for digital nomads and the danger of inviting them to stay

 

We have dear friends in Massachusetts and most of them have offered to have us over to stay when we are back there.   We are very grateful for the offers which are so appreciated. 

New York train to New Haven

It's a little tricky of course.  Such generosity should not be met with a resounding "thank you", followed by hauling out the calendar to reserve dates, because having people stay in your house for a while is hard work and we know it. 

We do make arrangements to stay where we feel we will be the least intrusive and are able to lend a hand by helping out with pet-sitting, internet or computer-related fix-ups, and that feels more comfortable.  We have also used AirBnB, long stay hotels and the house-sitting app (Trusted House Sitters) to find places to mix into our trips back.

The first friend we made in the USA lives in Marblehead and we stopped there in late May taking care of a few appointments.

Spring in the North East of the USA is breathtakingly beautiful. The explosion of new leaves and blossoms reminded us of our first Winter transition to Spring in May 2001 and I found myself (true to form) thinking - "Wow, we should buy a house here!" as we were walking down the street to the shoreline in Marblehead.

It's a vain hope, of course - we already know we can't really afford to retire in the USA and the houses in this little town are selling for well above what we can comfortably afford, but I did allow the thought to linger - thinking how as you get accustomed to your surroundings that they become bland to your eye.

The striking town vistas that I have enjoyed photographing in the places we have visited would all become ordinary once we have lived there for a while.

Anne will quickly point out that this is never true with a vista over the sea because those are so dynamic. 

After a few days in Marblehead we had a house-sitting set for the town of Amesbury which is north of the town of Essex where we lived for so many years.  It turns out that Amesbury is a quaint and very walk-able town with an attractive center featuring coffee shops and a variety of restaurants.

Right behind the town center is a stream with a small waterfall.

Our house-sit was a quiet few days with two King Charles Spaniels and two cats in a house full of rustic charm.

It was really great to be back in the vicinity of our work -  I had an opportunity to go to the RedHat Summit - what my Uber driver called a "nerd event" in Boston.

The Uber drive, over was probably the most interesting of my life.  My driver was a young man, Jerry Semper, who grew up going to Boston public schools and who took an opportunity to work for one of the large hospital organizations when they started a program for children to work for them over weekends and holidays.  He was able to buy an apartment after he left school and raise two deaf children before going back to school himself.  His daughter graduated from Boston University in 2023 (she was summa cum laude).  His entrance to Boston University is credited to an admissions officer who took an uber ride with him, heard his story and then suggested he apply for a scholarship that she knew matched his circumstances.

I was also able to take a hike with my hiking friends and ex colleagues, some of whom had done every one of the 4000 ft New Hampshire peaks with me.  The hike was short with not much elevation gain but the vibrant green of the new leaves underscored the beauty of spring in the North East.

We also took a drive down to Cape Cod to visit friends who took us for a walk on one of the local beaches.  The photo barely hints at what this beach looks like when the tide is all the way out - the beach extends for what seems like forever!

And of course living close to Nahant, we spent lots of quality time with our friends there.

We sold both of our cars on this trip which promises  a new challenge when we return.  Depending on the cost of car rental we might well buy a little beat up run-around for a few months and then sell or donate it to charity when we move on - we'll have to see.   We save enough to cover a good portion of a short rental but longer stays in the USA may require a more creative approach.

Our next stop is the UK to visit with our daughters and to take a look at Cornwall - a region of the UK that we have been encouraged to visit before we make up our minds where we will make our permanent home.  We have been traveling for 8 months and have given ourselves till the end of the year to finally decide.

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.