Portugal - Sept/Oct 2007

Whew, this is more difficult than I thought... trying to keep thoughts in order without sounding like a complete nut case, and what ends up first and what is last.....

Anyway, at my second attempt to post something on my site I would like to give you a really small impression of our surf trip to Portugal in September/October 2007.

Surfers: Ulrich "Hot-Like-Fire" Mayer and Me

Start was in Faro, which is part of the Algarve. For everybody who is planning on visiting Portugal, don't get caught in the Algarve!!! It is a place with a whole bunch of tourists and hotels and stress and money and all-round not nice! I arrived early in the morning and picked up our rental car....note to self....if surfing a Peugot 107 isn't the best choice..... and drove straight to the beach. No waves, since the Algarve mostly points towards Africa and doesn't get the Atlantic swell, but I could catch up on some shut-eye on the beach and go for a swim. The way every holiday is supposed to start!

Later in the day I picked up Ulrich and we headed straight out of Faro and for the west coast...

After a brief stop in Sagres, a quick look at the fort and "The last Bratwurst stand before America" .... its no joke, some Germans really have a bratwurst stand there... we cruised up a really spectacular coast to our fist stop near Odeceixe.
The following morning it was time to get the boards wet. A secluded beach with nobody there... Awesome!! After a good session we decided to head for the next break but alas we weren't that successful in finding good waves.

I get the feeling I am elaborating too much, so I will try an keep it short...

The following days were spent searching for waves but the weather didn't want us to have any fun i.e. rain for 2 days solid!

staying in and around Peniche for the rest of our holiday. It is probably worth a meBecause of the rain we decided to hop, skip and jump up north to Peniche via Sines and Lisbon. Were we ended upntion that the Portuguese countrside is really pretty. It is very dry in the south, but the further north you get, the more sub-tropical it becomes. The coastline is spectacular, lots of cliffs falling off into the ocean and lots of really tiny beaches with nobody in sight! It is really cool driving past cork plantations with these funny looking trees "naked" from the branches down where the cork has already been harvested.

Peniche is a very pretty town built on a small strip of land in the Atlantic Ocean. Because of its location it doesn't matter where the waves are coming from you can always find a good break. Once we had reached Peniche, the weather was perfect again and we had found a campsite where we paid €1,15 per night...BARGAIN!!!

The surf was great, the chicken was great (we lived off grilled chicken baked potatoes and beer for most of the trip) but as with most holidays our stay unfortunately went by too quickly.

Note to self.... if ever back in Portugal head straight for Peniche!

As you can see we didn't do much sight seeing, but that wasn't what the holiday was about.

Now I hope I can upload some pics (probably all 10 that we took) so you can get a bit of an impression!

Well that's all for now

Keep well
Peter