Travel Blog: Portugal

by Leonie

Home is where you park it. Yeah, I know. On a road trip, you are never really at home anywhere. But I think this sentence is very appropriate for our road trip. We felt very much at home in our campervan.

Two - three days before the start of the trip we packed all the things we needed for the next four weeks into the van. Our "plan", which many claim not to do in order to appear totally cool and chilly, was that we drive from Moosburg, Germany to Sagres, Portugal. Then we'd drive all the way through the Algarve to Faro, continue through Spain with a few stops and then take the ferry over to Italy. But Pablo is still rather the cool and chilly type. So you can also say that this was my "plan".

Many kilometers for four weeks. But I/we were also aware of that and I/we just wanted to see as much as possible. I think..no, i know when two people travel together, it's a perfect combination, when one person wants to take it easy and the other has a little idea in the back of his mind where the journey is going.

Let's go to Sagres! Because it took us about 26 hours to get there, we made our first stop in Switzerland and spent the night in a car parking lot. Because we wanted to leave immediately the next morning, the surroundings were not important to us. The next morning we got a coffee, brushed our teeth and drove on.

We arrived in France and stopped only to refuel and to cook scrambled eggs. The toll by the way to drive through France was almost 100 EUR in total.

Finally, after another few hundred kilometers, we reached the Spanish border. Pablo was already looking forward, because he could finally speak in his mother language again. We stopped in Barcelona for the next night and took a camping site.

The next day we made a fresh start and drove through beautiful Spain to Fuentes de Andalucía. Here we arrived at a small campground, free of charge - thanks to the park4night app, which was right next to the beautiful village. I felt here for the first time that we are now travelling and we have a wonderful and exciting time ahead of us. It is a beautiful memory, this village. We made tea and food there with our camping stove. The first bottle of wine was finally opened. It was warm and windy and so pleasant.

The following day we decided to go to the village and find a supermarket. We just found out now how beautiful this village really was. Pablo told me that it was very similar to Moroccan villages, which I could well imagine. We bought a few things in the supermarket and went to a café to have breakfast. On the way there, Pablo almost wet his pants once because of a street dog. It must have scared him a bit. Haha.

Around noon we went on and we knew that Sagres was not far away anymore. On our long journey we heard a lot of music. With our "great" Marshall Box, because the radio of the van didn't really work well and Bluetooth didn't have it at all. Because the van was so loud we had to turn the box always to the highest volume. At some point you always had a headache at the end. But Pablo found it much worse, which I found funny.

And there we were...the border to Portugal with a huge sign "Algarve". The toll works electronically in Portugal, which I actually find very stress-free and easy. We drove to our first stop in Portugal. The camping site, the only one, in Sagres. We absolutely had to take a shower and get along after the long drive. It was so nice to arrive.

Pablo, as he is, wanted to check out the campsite restaurant right away. Haha. Here we ate a delicious Dorade, very fresh. The owner came from Central America, so Pablo spoke Spanish with her. As so often with people from Central America, she called him "mi amor" and it seemed like they knew each other forever. That is the way it is with Latin Americans. I love that. But Pablo is just too cute and you just have to love him right away. When we finished eating an older man joined us, despite Corona. But we kept our distance. He told us he was a sailor and from Hamburg. He spoke Spanish and German. I think he already had a few beers, but it was quite nice to talk to him. He came from Hamburg to Portugal by motorcycle and slept in a tent every night.

We set off to the coast for the sunset. We reached the most southwestern point in Europe. The lighthouse in Sagres. Or just outside Sagres, Cabo Sao Vicente. It was a beautiful sunset, although an hour before, everything was covered in a sea of fog. Anyway, the first day in Portugal was very nice and we arrived well.

We had breakfast the next day and talked a little with our campground "neighbors" from Berlin, finally some time to chill out and lie around in the hammock. In the afternoon we wanted to check out the surf beach "Praia do Castelejo", which we did. Because we arrived quite late, we decided not to rent a surfboard anymore and spent the day with beer and swimming in the cold Atlantic Ocean. We watched the high waves and the many surfers and spent the night in Sagres again.

Full of sand we thought about taking a picture from above and drove to a deserted place above the beach where we had a gigantic view. As soon as we were up there, it was getting clowdy. Fortunately we still got a photo. We waited and I made some coffee, because we thought it would come up again, but it did not.

The very next day we ate a super hipster burrito in a super hipster store and drove on to Lagos. Unfortunately I don't know where we stayed overnight. But then it was probably not that spectacular. In any case we looked at Lagos and I thought it was pretty nice. Just like that, I imagined a Portuguese village/small town. Green tiled and colorful houses, many small stores and restaurants and just relaxed. We ate something typically Portuguese there, but it is hard to describe. In any case there were some kind of "French fries" in the food.

We went back to the van and we saw a couple arguing violently. The man threw the woman's backpack into the bushes and Pablo said to me, "If you ever do that, you're finished!” Haha. Because of all his camera equipment of course. It's not that we don't argue, but I'm certainly not going to throw his backpack around like that.

Our next destinations were now the "Praia do Camilo" and "Ponta da Piedade". We spent lunch with Caipi and Mojito in the van overlooking the sea at "Paria do Camilo" and in between we went swimming. It was gorgeous, caipi, a ventilator, van and Pablo.

Towards evening, when most of the people were gone, we went down to the beach again. We took some pictures and enjoyed the beautiful light.

We decided to spend the night in the parking lot. But in the night it turned out that this was not a good idea. Some group of strange aliens (...people), leaned all the time against our van and were quite loud. We drove and we found a much better place. In the morning we drove to "Ponta de Piedade" for Sunrise. Which was about three minutes away from our parking place. We did a tight "morning walk" to still have the good light for the photos. We made it! And now? We missed Sagres ... an empty beach, surfing atmosphere and beer. We drove back to where we came from.

Arrived in the surf paradise we rented a surfboard. I was not that fit anyway, so I couldn't stay in the water for more than an hour. Pablo was really good, for that we were so untrained. The waves were high, so it was really exhausting to paddle into the sea at all. The atmosphere was awesome. Sun, beach, no people, just the surfers in the water and everything was easy. In the small snack bar we ate mussels and Pablo a burger. Because we always cooked by ourselves the last days, it was really relaxing.

We were (almost) ready for a new environment. The "Praia do Castelejo" was just too beautiful. The next destination was somehow in the direction of "Benagil Caves", but we didn't really know where exactly. It turned out that the next campground with showers was a bit further inland and we unfortunately had to leave the coast first. We spent two nights there, in Armacao de Pera. The village was actually quite chilly, but after Pablo had done his laptop stuff with some caipis in the café on the beach and we didn't like the beach there either, we decided to drive back towards the coast, so the next morning.

Because I got some less pleasant news shortly before leaving for the beach, because of our car insurance and I don't want to go into that in detail, we had to find another café where I could do some things. And so we found it: The most beautiful café in the world! I felt like at home. It wasn't a hipster café, there was room to work, it wasn't too small or too big, you had a view of the sea, the coffee and food was awesome and there was wlan. I felt like in heaven and Pablo as well. Here we stayed...attention...five hours! We always ordered something else from the menu and everything was so delicious. Did I mention the name of the village? Carvoeiro. My favorite place on the Algarve coast.

Driving around here felt a bit like Beverly Hills from the Algarve. So many beautiful houses. We slept there near Carvoeiro for three nights on the same caravan park. Here we also wanted to have a look at some things. The "Praia da Marinha", the “Benagil Caves” and the "Praia de Albandeira". We spent a really nice beach time in the surroundings with vino and lots of food.

The "Benagil Caves" were definitely a highlight here. Oh man it was funny, we had to paddle with our SUP into the cave. But Pablo did a great job as always. Haha. It was a wild ride and I was always afraid of being attacked by a shark. We packed the camera in the Aquatech case and off we went.

One night we stayed directly at the sea at the "Praia de Albandeira", but when we woke up all our things in the campervan were wet. Wasn't such a good idea, but thank god everything dried again quite fast.

That morning we also decided to rent a hotel in Lagoa for the next night. We had some things to do and we thought that taking a shower would be cool. We were so happy because the hotel was absolutely amazing. A bed, a shower, a pool, breakfast buffet...yeah, sometimes it is cool in between. Of course fancy Pablo liked it too.

Our stay in Portugal was coming to an end, because we wanted to go on to Spain soon. In Faro, our last stop, we drank Sangria and ate soaked bread with prawns. Sounds funny, doesn't it? But as always it was super delicious.

And how our road trip went on, follows, but in Spain we arrived in a very exceptional place near Seville. At a small port with restaurants and bars opposite...