Carvoeiro, Portugal

December 15-22, 2007

The week in Carvoeiro (near Faro) went by rather quickly, but it was one where I spent some time indoors catching up on all my blogs to date, reflecting on the places I’d already been, and finishing my online Teaching Adults English course. I also had a chance to do a little laundry the first say I arrived and did a little exploring locally.

For some reason I had lost my drive for venturing too far in Portugal. I’m sure there were wonderful historic places to visit, like the city of Silves, examples of medieval fishing villages, evidence of pirates and other places of historic interest. I did consider going on little excursions in the area, but they mostly consisted of either trips to sea the coast and caves, a place to see a Moorish castle and the homes of the three Fatima children, or trips into Spain. I decided to cool my heels and was glad I had considering what the weather was like.

Although the first day or two were reasonably warm and sunny, the rest of the week turned out to be cloudy, then stormy and rainy. The ‘rain in Spain might fall mainly on the plain,’ but the rain on the south western coast of Portugal comes down in torrents—so hard it’s like standing in the middle of a car wash.

I’m an early riser and it was a little frustrating for me to have to wait until almost 9 am before it became light so I could feel safe walking down to the village, and it was dark again by 6 pm. With the darkness and the rain in abundance, I took a cab a couple of times and found this magnificent restaurant that made a very tasty tuna pâté, which they served with thin slices of bread as a starter, along with sliced carrots and whole olives in some kind of sauce. The first time I ate there, I had a lovely tropical chicken meal, and because it was so good the first time, I went back to the same place on my last day and ordered halibut steak. Of course, I had the tuna pâté again and tried to weasel the recipe from them, but without success.

Tuna and sardines seemed to be the items most commonly on the menus there. Considering Carvoeiro is a fishing village, this is not surprising. I was also served a wonderful fish soup at one place….the ingredients change all the time, depending on the fresh catches of the day. There were tons of different kinds of fish to choose from, but I mostly cooked my own tiny meals in my suite, where I was just as happy.

On one of my ventures out, I found a much better Internet café than the place I’d been using which was actually a couple of computers tucked into the corner of a junky ‘nickel and dime’ store. The new place had some wonderful ‘hot chocolate’, perhaps the best I’ve ever tasted….at least it was sure good on the rainy night I went there.

I did meet a young girl from Brazil, who helped me translate an e-mail message from a school in Spain, and an elderly English couple who were a great deal of fun. Luckily too, a tiny shop at the bottom of the stairs from my set of rooms had some used English books in it. The Donkey Sanctuary Charity Shop had clothes and household things as well, tucked into two tiny rooms. I would by some used books, read them, then donate them back again. I thought about buying some warmer clothes, but didn’t as there wasn’t any room in my luggage for more, and I suspected I would be in a warmer climate again soon.


The main problem with the place I stayed was that it didn’t have any proper heating. Even on the warm days, it was quite cold….two small wall heaters just couldn’t do the big place (one very small one in the bedroom and another to do the entire rest of the place, which was quite big)….as it was, it finally warmed up a little in the suite on the last day that I left. Up until then, I had quilts and blankets piled on top of me, and I wore my socks to bed some nights. The clothing I’d brought was actually quite adequate otherwise. I just put on a long-sleeved t-shirt, a warm pullover and my jacket. I just needed an umbrella and a pair of clothes, though I did just fine.

As I had not pre-booked my travel from Portugal to Spain, I had a little difficulty getting flights on the day I needed (Sat Dec 22), so I ended up buying a bus ticket. Not as simple as it sounds, as it turned out.

First I had to take a taxi from Carvoeiro to Lagoa at 6:30 in the morning. The taxi people wouldn’t let me book the ride the night before, but suggested to call in the morning when I was ready to go. The first problem I had was that the dispatcher in the morning didn’t have a smidgen of English and it took some doing to get him to understand where I was and where I wanted to go. Normally they only take 5 or 10 minutes to arrive, but almost 20 passed and I was beginning to think I wouldn’t get to the bus station on time (and there wasn’t another one for two days).

As per usual on this day, the rain was pounding everything in sight by the time the taxi driver finally arrived. He had no intention of getting out and helping and so I hauled my luggage down the staircase and a few metres across the patio through the puddles in the parking lot and to the waiting taxi. The driver watched me struggle with my luggage until he realized I was getting his back seat wet, and then he got out and opened his trunk and transferred it there.

For me, after being in the deluge of rain for only a couple of minutes, I felt like I’d been dumped out of a washing machine before the spin cycle. I was soaked from head to toe and could feel the dampness all the way through three layers of clothes. It wasn’t until I was safely on the bus and rummaging through my backpack that I realized how wet everything was. All my papers were sodden and the sweater I pulled out of my backpack to change into was wet as well. I ended up hanging my jacket, pullover, sweater, etc. over the bus seats to dry them out, but the bus wasn’t that warm. Of course, my pant legs, socks, shoes, etc. were also soggy, so I was a cool, damp bunny.

After four hours of snatching bits of sleep, reading a little when it became light enough, and turning my damp clothes over, we reached Seville, where I had a three hour wait before I could catch my connection to Almeria.