portugal

…..not in Portugal anymore

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But we can see it from our hotel window.

2 nights ago we were looking at what town we were to stay in next and realized there was a large river to get across. The only bridge was about 20 miles up river. The OTHER thing we realized was that at that point the river is what divided Portugal from Spain. We were a bit surprised as we had thought we would be in Portugal for more of the hike as it is called Camino Portugal. Anyways, onwards and upwards….Oh and the OTHER thing is that the storm we are experiencing is apparently the tail end if Hurricane Helene…. I guess they call it “tempest”. So we asked at the desk and they said it was not certain if the water taxis would be running in these conditions, so we asked them to book us a taxi to Guarda for 10 AM the next day. It was to be a shorter day and having lived in a town at the end of a river. (Bandon Oregon) we were familiar with the dangers of that particular part of the river and so decided to take the day off, get a taxi and do some laundry. many days of heavy rains everything we have with us is soaked and getting mildewy. We also figured we have done an additional 16 KM in the previous days when we were lost. This picture shows the river crossing later in the day ….once the winds had lessened. It turned out that the water taxis WERE running. We had absolutely NO regrets.

We were dropped at the town square in Gaurda and, did laundry, had lunch and then started looking at where out hotel might be. Well it turns out it was a the top of the hill adjacent to Guarda. 4 KM with 350 metre rise in elevation. SIGH.

Well it turned out to be QUITE a breathtaking climb up out of Guarda, Monte Santa Trega.

It was quite a hike up, so good that we had not done the whole distance that day.

What was at the top was an archeological dig that exposed a very large village that began around 400 BC. It was a settlement influenced by the romans and “Punics”. Research has shown… The Iberian Peninsula Northwestern takes part of the punic commercial route which from Cadiz sails by the Atlantic coast looking for tin, slaves or leather. The presence of abundant and varied pottery confirms that the main role of the trade in Santa Trega. The Citania (~city) will lose its relevance when the construction of roads reduces the importance of maritime trade.

Each of these would be a home, these were all excavated during an archaeological project.

Much later,(and higher up the mountain is the “Santa Trega Hermitage” recorded as early as the 12th century, and renewed and enlarged in the 16th and17th centuries. It is a religious site where devotees go through the stations of the Via Cruces (way of the cross.

I guess the very best part of all of this is that we were staying at the very top, in a room that looked out over Portugal and the city of Guarda in another direction. I must say the room itself was OK at best, but the view was amazing. Not sure I have ever stayed at a place with such a view.

Well all this walking is definitely cutting into my blog writing time, I am very slow walker, take LOTS of pictures and check route often. So a few pictures along the way…

Well I guess we had better get going if we do not want to arrive and next lodging at 7 PM like last night. Oddly there is a time change between Portugal and Spain and we are now an hour further from home

Bye for now love janet and Ken…..

day 2 porto and day one hiking camino

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WELL…. to begin with, Porto must be the most beautiful city in the world. Now that could have been the sunny day, or it could have been the lovely wine at lunch speaking but what a place.

We spent our last day in Porto hiking down to the historic area and over the bridge to Gai….sp. Which is the city across the river from Porto, the place where all of the Port “lodges” are. We were going to tour one of the “lodges” but decided rather to take in the amazing Duoro river sides.

This is the bridge that crosses over and as you can see it has 2 levels you can cross on, the higher one (that the metro crosses, and walkers) and a lower one that cars cross as well as walkers.

As you can see Porto has been built on a rather steep setting, it is just about a KM to the open ocean, so a tidal part of the river Duoro. We had a wonderful lunch across from Porto (so we could get the great pictures) and the man serving us was amazing, he could apparently speak whatever language the customers did and he could also apparently read their minds. He quickly moved us to an area where smoking was not allowed, I said how did you know we did not smoke, he said he could tell. OH and apparently this macdonalds is the most beautiful one in the world.

We have discovered that moreso than Port, Portuguese wines are amazing,…. and cheap. Both whites and reds.

So we went to a wine bar our last night in Porto and met a large group of Americans who had moved over to Porto in the past 3 years. 2 of them were US military and had just decided they could no longer live in the US, because they could not stand the politics, with regards to US foreign policy. They LOVE it here and would never go back. The wife of one the men, had cancer and in the US they had not been able to receive a diagnosis, yet coming here she receives the best possible care, and treatments.

We found the 3 different depictions of women interesting.

Well yesterday we started the camino with the thoughts that we had 25 KM to walk. Since we had walked so much the day before and actually hiked the first several KM of the trail on our way back to hotel, we decided to take an UBER to near the spot we walked to, FOZ. Good thing we did, since (despite cheating in the morning with the UBER) we ended up walking 33 KM on our first day. LOTS of Voltarin cream last night.

Our first camino shell sign of our trip. ( you follow these to know “the way”

Since we are traveling the Portugal coastal camino, it was no surprise that we walked along beaches most of the day. There were heavy rainfall warnings and even some severe rainfall warnings(whenever you go to get directions on Apple Maps they give you the weather warnings. Most of the “trail” is a board walk that stretches for miles, it appears to protect the landscape from erosion and provide a great platform to walk on.

The boards are not slippery as they have many small grooves in them, that I guess allows the water to pour out. While we were not on the boardwalk we were on tiny streets through towns.

There were an assortment of things like this scattered all the way along, I am sure on a dryer day it would have been a great place for picnic. They also have exercise stations with very odd “equipment”, so you can get in shape while you hike the camino 🤨. The boardwalk is not just used by hikers, also people in towns around walking, LOTS of runners, we even had a guy bouncing a basketball following us for ages…

We are currently staying at Hotel Costa Verde, in the town of Pavia de Varzim. The company that did the booking for us listed the Hotel as Costa Verde, rather the Hotel Costa Verde, so we hiked to Costa Verde, which was a LONG ways OFF the path, only to find that there was NO hotel there. From there we had to walk BACK to Hotel Costa Verde, which is basically how we ended up walking so far yesterday. We have also determined that the distances between places on the map are just “rough estimates”, and since we are staying to the north of Pavia de Varzim, that is another reason for the long distance yesterday . The good part of these “estimates” is that today is MUCH shorter, only 20m KM, so I guess the price we paid yesterday we reap today.

What would a blog be without a dog story. THIS is from a restaurant we stopped at yesterday, this little guy was on a LONG leash and doing exactly what Tucker does when he wants something. I guess dogs are pretty international beings. What tucker does when I do not seem to GET what he wants is to push down with his head on my lap (just to make sure I am paying attention.). We miss the guy, but have good reports that he is doing well at Dylan and Sarah’s, and instead of usually following me around like a puppy dog, he is following Sarah.

Thanks for reading, much love, Janet and Ken in Portugal

Day one…. Portugal

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We arrived in Portugal yesterday AM after an overnight flight.

I think it is fair enough to totally write off the first day of a trip to Europe because it seems that there is always an over night flight flying east. So glad we have 3 days prior to starting our Portugal camino.

I am going to tell about our first 2 issues coming into the country, only as a means of alerting others, so as not to make the same mistakes as us.

First of all, totally exhausted we ended up at customs with several very large flights arriving at the same time and two very large areas of customs. We started into one area and the lady told us Canada, US Europe passports etc. So we got into this huge lineup, it said electronic passports. We were pretty sure that we had “electronic” passports since we have the new Canadian passports which include a large plastic page that seems pretty fool proof. Since it seems like a large credit card page we thought YES these will be the ultimate in “electronic”. We after a very long line of the back and forth sort where you face the same people again and again as you work your way to the front. As we were going through the line, I commented to Ken, that I wondered what was the difference between the two areas of lineup….. We got to the front of the line and this lady noticed our “NEW” “Canadian” passports .. and she said OH no, these machines do not handle the new Canadian passports. Then she announced to all of the other people in line this little “detail” about the new Canadian passports, and we were directed to area 5, which was the “traditional” customs area where you walk up to a guy and he asks you questions. This lineup was even longer. I told myself…. relax, you KNEW that the first day was a write off. 🤨

The next “event” I am not including as a negative against Portugal, but as a warning that might prevent anyone else from …. being as dumb as we were. As usual we got our first scam out of the way to begin with early. I guess being up all night, as well as being a little overwhelmed with a totally foreign language, we were ideal subjects. The first question the guy in the airport asked was “first time to Portugal?” which I think was important …. We were looking for the transit to get to the very large BUS station in Lisbon, which was 3 KM from airport. Under usual circumstances, we likely would have just walked, given that we ARE here for a Camino hike. When the guy approached us saying Taxi? We sort of turned him down but when ken asked him how much to get to BUS station he said it was under 10 Euros. I guess we thought, what the heck, let’s indulge ourselves. We SHOULD have been alerted when we got outside and there were lots of taxis waiting, but he had obviously contacted his taxi guy. I guess we SHOULD have known at this point that something was up. To begin with we had thought he WAS the taxi driver. It was all downhill from there. The Taxi finally pulled up and the guy helped us into the taxi. I was following the direction we were going on my phone, and we seemed to be going in the opposite direction, and I commented. Although Ken was attempting to talk to him in his rudimentary Portugese, he clearly only seemed to know a few words of English. We finally got to the BUS station and he turned to give us the fee amount, and we had our 10 Euro prepared, but he used his phone to show us that the fee was 246 Euro. We very quickly woke up and told him in so many many words…. words apparently wasted on him because our words were all in English. Ken was a bit confused as to whether it was pounds, or Euros…. I quickly calculated that this was about 450 dollars Canadian. It WAS 3 KM, and our luggage was in the trunk… which I usually never do. OMG!! Ken made it clear that we only had about 15 euros and 15 pounds sterling. The guy started saying that he was going to take us back to airport and contact the police. We asked if we could talk to his “boss” the guy that we had originally been lured into this “taxi”. He contacted this guy on the phone and suddenly the guy from the airport who spoke perfect English did not understand any English…🤨🤨

I guess I figured that this guy was not going to do us any harm, but I was most concerned about our luggage in the trunk, so I asked him to open trunk, ……. and he did. We gave him all the cash we had, which was about 15 euros and 15 pounds. Got out luggage and left. My theory was that this guy thought we were dumber than we actually were, which was pretty dumb already. He gathered that we would be paying with credit cards AND that we were not familiar with how the pricing was written out. It can be kind of confusing between commas and periods.

I guess our lesson which we should have known is not to respond to anything the guys lurking, and coming up to you in the airport, are selling.

We got to the bus station and caught the bus from Lisbon to Porto, which I realized later was a wee bit aggressive for the first day. We arrived in Porto about 5 KM from our hotel and it was absolutely pouring rain. Long story shortened, we caught the metro to the area near the hotel, walked 1KM in pouring rain to get to a lovely hotel.

Pretty darned wet….. For a variety of reasons we took very few pictures on our first day and I guess I wish Ken had not take THIS ONE.

We had a lovely dinner of Cod and potatoes, and although we have looked forward to some great local Port, now that we are in Porto, we decided to wait another day until we have had maybe 12 hours more sleep.

Today bright and perky, and ready to face the day, and buy umbrellas. I must say I have never seen so many umbrellas in my life.

Janet and Ken, missing our dog Tucker…..