Viagens Internas, Portimão e Albufeira

Our last days in Albuferia find us mostly as homebodies. We’ve been away nearly a month and the duties of our normal life are beckoning, and my workload has multiplied suddenly. It’s a shame to work on vacation, but being gone this long I could hardly complain and I’m sincerely grateful to have employment that allows me to work remotely.

All in all, we’re taking a vacation from our vacation and with a few exceptions, this post will be about travel of a more inbound direction.

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Stasia’s schooling

Herself is taking a deep dive into The Listening Path and when I peek over her shoulder I see page after page with underlined passages and annotated margins – all of it looking rather smart in her favorite new pink Bic ballpoint she’d love to tell you about (it’s made in France, you know). Yet another excellent souvenir picked up at a posto de gasolina in the Alentejo interior.

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John’s jobs

For myself, I’ve got some hurdles to clear. For example, tonight I am presenting the body of design work I’ve been involved with for the past year over a zoom call. The actual meeting will prove to be successful, though I have to perform some connectivity gymnastics to keep the connection alive – the internet here is particularly spotty.

Working while traveling is a bit of a challenge for me. It’s hard to exit the vacation brain, especially when the time differential overlaps my work-day with tapas, beer, and early evening chillaxing.

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The empire strikes back

Hardly a day has passed since I found my server accounts hacked and compromised. Though I took pains to zap all traces and close all doors to these villains, I really only know enough to be dangerous and a 15-year-old with a hacking kit is more than a worthy adversary. The bastards have struck again with a vengeance, this time creating 80 high-capacity servers, each one an instrument of fraud, identity-theft, DDOS attacks.. there’s no limit to the imagination here. Got me again! Well played, black hats.

Game on, motherflippers.

We join as opposites in the eternal struggle of light over shadow, and I resist you to the last – though I concede you’ve managed to outsmart me twice and inflict a surprising amount of excess fees, I’ll take it as a travel souvenir.

I recognize that I’m outnumbered by your kind, less intelligent, slower to react, and a bit too laissez-faire, but that’s because I only have so many fucks to give and you aren’t one of them. I’ve enough of a brain to figure this out, and the endurance and patience to prevail. You’re a stone in my river and I flow right over. You’re a fly in my soup and I eat you.

Despite my inevitable victory, I still care about you. You’re some mother’s child and believe me, I was also self-consumed and destructive at your age. I look forward to the day you grow up and see that there is something to making the world a better place, regardless of the condition you’ve found it.

Until then, I won’t be taken so easily. Today’s deeper research has shown me my vulnerability – it wasn’t where I thought it was and my friends in the light have helped me lock you out…

…for now.

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Redemption

Carla tells us our tiles are ready to pick up. Time to get some redemption for the comedy of errors we enacted the other day. Let’s set off to Ferraguda again, this time with a couple hours to spare. We’ve gotten wise to the ways of your rum roundabouts Portugal, and I think you’ll find us quite the city mavens (but be nice, nonetheless).

We just pick a beach in the general vicinity represented by a strip of tan on the map punctuated by a tiny dot labeled ‘Castello’. A castle on a beach sounds like a fine start so we apply digits to the mini-brain and dutifully go where it tells us.

Our confidence is justified, and it’s a lovely, late-morning cruise. At one point we’re taking a left turn up onto the curb into what appears to be a narrow walking path. We ‘Yokels of Yesterday’ would’ve balked at this – but we know now that the country abounds with makeshift roads and if it’s at all wide enough for a vehicle, odds are you can (and should) drive on it. This one takes us up through pastoral farmland and we just hope we don’t meet any oncoming traffic around the many switchbacks because there’s barely enough room for one car. Stasia gets a couple gold stars here because she gives little toots when we come around blind corners. She also honks. (That was a fart joke in case you missed it)

It drops us off nearby the beach and we park. We’re anxious to see what kind of praia is waiting over that rise but stop for a couple fashion photos against the gates of ye olde castle.

Cresting the hill, we’re delighted to discover it’s a linda praia– mostly empty and different than the others. The sand is packed a bit harder than previous beaches and has a fantastic water-carved pattern.

There is an old ship with two masts and a rolled-up sail that looks like a prop from a pirate movie. An American couple strolls past with a bag and with all the shells strewn about you’d think they were collecting – but when I see them pick up a piece some detritus and a plastic bottle I realize what that bag is for. I thank them for their care – it really made my morning and I realize it’s one of the few instances where I’ve seen trash outside a bin.

Strolling further we see Castello de João behind some large impressive limestone formations, their windblown hollows providing caves, nooks, and crannies for sun-shunners and their picnics.

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Tears and beers

I should see how far Carla is from this beach. Chronos is smiling down at us – she is an 8-minute walk – in fact, we can almost see the graveyard next to her studio from here. This is the way of Portugal. Everything is much closer than the map makes it look.

We pick up the tiles, they’re so beautiful! Carla’s busy so we pack them up and walk back to the beach for a satisfying repast of fish and chips, sopa de peixe, and salad. We take out the tiles to geek on them again.

Stasia’s yin/yang of Johnny Rocket (who passed a couple years ago) and his brother Quincy Jones (still with us) reminds us so much of the past 15 years. Born in a barn and soon after adopted by us, we found them curled together like this so many times. We miss our Johnny and indulge in our memories, tears mixing with beers.

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We could take a vacation just in this fish department, Portimão

We pop eastward over a bridge to meander about Portimão looking for a supermarket. When you type ‘market’ into the map app, you’ll get everything from a tiny hole in the wall to a giant superstore, and it’s hard to qualify one from the other just by looking at dots. We take a chance on one such dot and find it’s nothing more than a mostly empty concrete room with a small stall of vegetables for sale – which is kind of awesome because it appears that the farmer and his wife are the ones running it. We pick up a few including a beautifully ripe heirloom tomato, a perfect mango, and an onion that looks like it was plucked out of the earth a few minutes ago.

Still, it’s not the selection we were hoping for so we continue. Stasia’s command of the wheel notwithstanding, it’s still a bit of an unnerving feeling driving through what appear to be large sidewalks.

A sudden hankering for the gelato place we just passed makes us park and as we’re strolling around a corner we happen upon the holy grail of grocery quests – a mega-sized version of Pingo Doce! I could spend weeks here and that isn’t too much of an exaggeration. We’re total supermarket nerds.

The fish department in particular is a wonder of the world – a beautiful bounty – an overflowing ice palace of marine life! I want to learn what each one is, what they taste like, and how to prepare them. The shrimp hardly live up to their name – these robust creatures are piled high in multiple cubbies as there are so many different kinds. The jumbos are yuuuuge – really just a bit smaller than lesser lobsters.

Back home, you’ll find frozen meat sections packed with hams, turkeys, and chickens. They have some of that here, but by far, octopus and cod are the headliners. The former is packed into large roasting pan-sized containers, frozen and formidable. The latter is dried, salted, and stacked on racks, and in this form, it’s called Bacalhau and used in many popular national dishes that we’ve sampled.

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TnT Tapas

We’re getting the hang of this tapas thing, which is a blast because you take turns – one making stuff, the other hangs out and has a cold one and then both eat.

We begin with a bowl of olives we scored from those Portimão farmers and give it the kickapow! treatment Nuno showed us by adding olive oil, raw garlic, salt, pepper, oregano and a touch of balsamic. This is paired with some smoky roasted chilis stuffed with pimento cream cheese we saw at Pingo and threw in our basket faster than you can say queijo.

This foreplay is followed up with a sexy, briny linguine with fresh clams, courtesy of chef Stasia who deftly fortifies her wine, garlic and onion reduction with the wild caught blue shrimp heads I just removed in prepping for the next course. Her pasta dish is a symphony – piquant pops of fresh shelled clams with seasoned pasta in a lemony garlic broth – chopped cilantro to garnish.

We cap off this food orgy with our now traditional toasted rice and veg, seafood style topped by some piri-piri crusted, pan-fried, locally caught blue shrimp. It’s a great topper and with bellies extended, we watch an 8 out of 10 cats before catching some z’s in what is our last night in the Algarve.

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Tchau tchau, Albuferia

We’ve enjoyed this condo timeshare despite never having taken advantage of the pool, which glows in the night like some fountain of youth. It’s always windy and cool at night and for all the light show, the resort isn’t heating the jacuzzis yet (out of season). Like either turn on the heat or turn off the lights.

We end our stay with espresso and a nibble at another national treat, Folar de Olhãu, which is eaten around Easter. Essentially it’s a layered sugary coffee cake sort of thing which lures you in with its promise of cinnamony comfort and crystally pop of sweetness.

Don’t eat too much we learn afterward, it’s a time-release bomb – but a nice bookend to this lengthy stay down south, where the world comes to be Portuguese or is it the other way round? We’re off to Èvora, see you soon.