Portugal 2016 04 25 Mata National de Conceico

Today’s scenery was very different than yesterday’s  because we were up in a national forest.  To begin with, I must explain that Portugal was completely deforested almost 150 years ago.  With deforestation came soil erosion and lack of water retention in the dry soils.

To solve that problem, based on the work of a British botanical collector in the 1850’s, it was decided to plant 35,000 Eucalyptus trees to thwart the deterioration.  The plan succeeded all too well because the Eucalyptus took over everything, crowding out native plants and supporting no wildlife.  Eucalyptus forests need fire to regenerate, and it is hard to say how fires will be treated here.  There is obvious clearing of trees but who knows how effective that will be.

I thought that a picture of the Eucalyptus and an Opuntia cactus seemed like a good cross-cultural mix.

From the forest mountaintops we descended to arable land that included almond groves, pine plantations, persimmon trees and market gardens.

And (how could I possibly forget?) , for the winos in the bunch.........

There were some tremendous “castles” in the countryside, some belonging to prosperous farms and some belonging to foreign ownership.

The roads were dry, with various sedimentary formations describing the landscape.

Despite going on the more challenging level walk (13 km with 180 metres of ascent), we were forced to stop at a local bed and breakfast operation offering tea (or beer/wine) and cake before reboarding the bus.  Life is tough.  Temperatures were in the mid-20’s today with unrelenting sun; we will sleep well tonight.

As usual, the wildflowers continued to be a feature along the way, with lavender and gorse as some of the ones I recognized.

Portugal 2016 04 24 Along the Coast to Talvira

Today featured a winding route through several very interesting areas, but an attempt to reconstruct it chronologically would be beyond my powers at this point of the day.

We walked 16 km in temperatures around 24C in bright sunshine all day.  The terrain was fairly flat, but included treks through salt marshes, beaches and salt pan flats.  Despite the relatively barren conditions, we saw carob trees (Brian says that’s where Carobeans come from.............),olive trees, kumquat, and others.

The salt marshes were intriguing, with lots of water birds, interesting vegetation, and low tide boats.

Lunch was at a restaurant on the edge of a beach that was miles long, and beautiful. 

Beside the restaurant was an Anchor Cemetery:  remnants of the tuna fishing industry that eventually died out.  Apparently, these anchors, weighing about a ton each, were carried out to the water, where they were settled with a buoy attached by a rope.  Some kind of netting system (now totally illegal) was used to capture the tuna as they came in to eat the sardine/anchovy shoals.  These anchors are about 4 feet high and four feet long, and the cemetery gives a haunting impression.

After walking 2 km down the long, beautiful beach, we caught a water taxi (max capacity 12), piloted by Rudy the heartthrob who has a reputation of devastating lady tourists with his good looks and charming personality.

The water taxi took us to a small village, Santa Luiza, which is a major octopus fishing area.  These were some of the octopus fishing boats.

Finally, we walked along salt pans which were harvested to generate large amounts of salt for human digestion.  The piles of clean white salt looked much better than the look and smell of the salt pans.

Our hotel features a buffet meal each evening, with a variety of local offerings.  I regret to inform you I did not have a picture of one of last night’s feature desserts called “Camel Drooling”.  (Could I make up these things?  NO!)  I will stay vigilantly posted until it’s return, when I will document it fully with proper photographs.

Portugal April 23 Lisbon to Tavira

Rising at 6:30 am, we hustled out to the train station to catch an 8:00 train, only to find it was full.  Here, you pay for your train fare, and then in a separate transaction, book your actual seats (at no charge).  We had to wait for another train at 10:00 once we learned what seat-booking was all about.

The train station was a fascinating as a piece of architecture.  There were 4 floors featuring shopping, cafes, ticket sales and platforms on succeeding levels.

Ordering coffee created another opportunity to learn about Portuguese culture.  When you order "coffee”, you get expresso in a cup about the size of a shot glass.  This probably has the caffeine equivalent to that of four extra-large Tim Horton coffees in total.   It gave a whole new meaning to “drug culture”.

Our train trip took over 3 hours, but it was quiet since all the trains are electric.  Then a taxi carried us for the next 30 km to our final destination:  Vila Gale Hotel in Talvira.

Our tour leaders took us out for an impromptu tour of Talvia.  Architecture here is a curious mix of eons.  One phase was that of the Moors in the early centuries AD, which involved many tiles and decorative touches.

Then, there was a huge earthquake in 1755, which toppled many buildings and so much was rebuilt on top of what rubble was left.  Current typical Portuguese buildings are those of white stucco with red tile roofs.

There still are remains of mediaeval castles such as Castle Talvira, in the center of town in which we are staying.  An engineering inspection took place while we were there.

A church we visited included Baroque tiling, and typical gold trim on the altar.

Then we crossed a Roman-style bridge across the River Galio which harboured a bunch of tuna-fishing boats.

Then, to confuse everything, there was an excavation of homes with layers from  8^th century BC to 18^th century AD.  Apparently, one can cover 26 centuries of history here without batting an eyelash.

A touch of whimsy:  look at the door knockers!

Finally, a brief note from the naturalist.  Many of the buildings had a complete line of swallow’s nest from one end of the roof to another.  This is high density housing that went on long before the humans started here.

Tomorrow we are off on our first day of walking!  Stay tuned.

Lisbon Portugal April 22

There is rarely much we can say about the first day of travel because we are so jetlagged that there is no intelligent thought going on.  One of our ways to counteract that is to go for as long a walk as possible after checking into the hotel.

We walked in a very built up section of the city, but to my surprise there were all kinds of wonderful “weeds” blooming in small lost spaces of green near the sidewalk.  The first I found was a  kind of geranium plant that was trying to turn into a shrub.

Then there was an almond sapling in blossom.

The hotel entrance had some palm trees (much to Brian’s surprise) and large groups of Birds of Paradise flowers which added to the sense of being somewhere different.

Our teeny little hotel balcony gave us the opportunity to watch some rush hour traffic, providing considerable entertainment to those of us with lights on and nobody home. 

That’s all she wrote for today—lights out!

Spring has finally really arrived!

The first part of April featured uncommonly cold temperatures and we had snow on the ground until a few days ago when temperatures finally zoomed up into the 20's.  Trees are still bare and only the poplars are starting to show thicker buds.

The crocuses started blooming a week ago after the first blooms were frozen out at -10C (Sheesh!).  In this patch, any crocus bloom is a bonus because the bulbs are favourite chipmunk food.

I was thrilled to discover a miniature daffodil in bloom today, with another one budding out nearby.

Jim’s daffodils are almost ready to make a spectacular show, for they have multiplied over the years and are spread everywhere.

The teeny gardens in the back yard are also showing promise, with alliums above the ground and evening primroses blooming.

Nature has come back in spades, with the coons coming back (we saw three different ones yesterday).  I (accidently) drop dog food on a regular basis on the berm, and not only the coons enjoy it—crows come by, coyotes come by, etc, etc, etc.

The phoebe is also checking the back wall of the garage, where it nests almost annually.  There are two bases, and one intact nest, but it will take some time to determine where the phoebe will finally choose.  We think there may be front yard phoebes and back yard phoebes, but we are not sure.  Generally they will build a new nest each year, but reuse it if they have multiple broods.

Stay tuned for the malloysatlarge.blogspot.ca.  We leave on Thursday April 21 to fly over to Portugal for a two-week walking trip.  First post should happen Friday April 22 if I have enough post-jetlag coherence to take pictures.  If not, things will start shortly afterwords!