Armação de Pêra; Can We Call This Home?

[A week old entry] We’re heading south to Portugal's Algarve. Now I sit in my favorite little café overlooking the park and the bay. It’s such a great town, I’m going to miss it. Funny after I said I wouldn’t live here. I still wouldn’t, but mainly because the grocery stores are too limited. We would have to own a car to drive over to Caldas de Rainha.

I absolutely loved going for walks on the beach. It’s level and firm, so I could wear my tennies for my walk. Then I’d cut up to the sidewalk to work out on the community gym equipment. Joe usually tagged along and did his workout on the beach. If I lived here, I’d have my thin wetsuit and be able to swim in the bay. Not my favorite, but I could do it. Today I watched a dog body surf. I’d never seen that before. It would race along the beach next to the surf and then it would leap in, diving under the wave. When the next wave would come in it would ride it. I couldn’t capture a pic of it on a wave, but I tried.

A couple of times a week, we walked on the boardwalk to Salir do Porto on the other side of the bay. This town doesn’t have much to offer other than housing and several restaurants… and of course it’s famous sand dune. It’s extremely quiet and peaceful.

Poised over the bay is a pretty chapel. We’ve admired from afar many times. I finally decided to investigate it and found that it’s a popular easy hike. I researched it and determined that a warm day was required to go. The reviews said it’s super windy up there. Well the conditions finally matched my willingness to get windblown and we went.

I highly recommend this walk. We started on a white gravel trail next to the community pool. At first I thought I’d screwed up my directions, but the trail turned into an unused road that climbed up to a wider ridge road. At the end of the road it turned into a steeper trail that was slippery with fine gravel. I don’t advise you to do this if your reactive-balance isn’t good.

It took us about an hour to get to the chapel from the pool and it was worth it. The views from the ridge are amazing. It wasn’t too windy until we were within about fifty yards from the chapel. I wish we’d been able to visit it before they rebuilt it. Apparently it used to be gorgeous ruins. Now it’s a quaint little white chapel to get married in. The Old Customs House is below it on the beach. Joe and I decided it wasn’t worth scrambling down to the water’s edge to visit it, but it’s an important part of Portuguese history. Vasco da Gama’s boats used for the Indian Campaign came through here. Including the Nau São Gabriel, Vasco da Gama’s flagship. World changing stuff.

We’ve arrived in Armação de Pera, and now I’m sitting in yet another café. Joe walked to the beach to work-out. When we arrived yesterday on the cross-country bus, we climbed off, gathered our belongings and watched the bus leave. We got an Uber to our new place and as we were offloading, we realized my backpack wasn’t among the bags. This is as close to tragedy we’ve come to in our travels. This laptop I'm writing on, our passports, Euros, and all my pants and shorts were in the pack. I immediately called Rede Expressos and talked to a sweet young man. He said he’d contact the bus driver and tell him to give me my backpack next time he came through. So, three hours later (and pizza, beer, and a glass of wine) we stood nervously waiting to see if the driver really had my bag--intact. In most countries Joe and I travel through it would have immediately been stolen or at least emptied. When our bus came back, my pack was sitting in the window and the driver gave me the thumbs up sign as he pulled in. I had to fight the urge to hug him.

Our little apartment in Armação de Pêra is on the twelfth-floor of the Torre Ouro (Gold Tower). The view and sounds of the ocean are amazing. The only negative is the rock-hard mattress. This time I don’t have a memory-foam-futon to sneak off to. The first night, I slept three or four hours. The next day I pulled out every comforter in the place and made a mountain of folded comforters. That night I slept fine--with ear plugs. I know. Why ear plugs? Though the sound of the ocean is wonderful, the sound of cars driving over the loose manholes below our window isn't as wonderful.

I woke up to a calm peaceful day. Clear skies and calm waves. I could hear birds chirping… a lot of birds and very close. I went to the kitchen balcony to investigate and located a nest directly above the door. The baby birds weren’t visible, but they were certainly audible. I waited to see what kind of bird it could be, but it was obviously pretty nervous about me standing there. I retreated into the kitchen and closed the door. I have to say, this is a much better noise than the bar below us at the last place.

So, Portugal is shaped like a loaf of bread. The Algarve is the bottom portion, maybe one or two slices of the loaf. This city is located in the center of the Algarve on the rocky coast. The eastern half of Armação is an estuary opening on to a wide sandy beach. The western half has beaches nestled up against the red cliffs. The erosion has created a work of art.

This town has surprised me. I thought it would be more Portuguese, but it’s mostly expats. In this case the people wandering the promenade seem to be mostly Indian with Europeans being a second and some Africans third. I’ll admit I’m disappointed with that. Everyone is as polite as usual. We could probably make friends easier here than a Portuguese town, but it feels like cheating somehow.

The wide-open beach is full of lots and lots of people. The Portuguese youth were all out on the sand playing fút-volley. This is a unique Portuguese game of standing in a big circle and using their feet to kick the ball high up in an arc, like in volleyball. Fútbol is an obsession here that I’ve talked about before. It’s not the same as the obsession with football back in the States. Football is watched, fútbol is played—by everyone. Kids everywhere are scooting a soccer-ball in and out of the adults walking along. Without a second thought everyone, granny included, will capture it with a swift foot and send it along to the next unsuspecting walker. Last week in São Martinho, we watched a group of boys playing soccer in the park. A woman was sound asleep on her blanket in the park. The ball flew all around her, finally it ended up on the other side of her sleeping form. The boys quietly poised themselves on each side of her and expertly kicked the ball in an arc over her, and the game continued.

This town, Armação, has a lot of grocery stores. The Lidle is my current favorite. Though it doesn’t have a butcher-shop, it does have lots of precut fresh meat. We got our basics and will go back today for dinner food… probably salmon and small potatoes. I brought my Cajun seasoning for the salmon. Yum. A couple of days later I discovered a butcher shop in the local market, which is open every morning. I bought ribs and they were excellent. I also bought an amazing fig, date, and nut cake.

The other night we went to The Water Dog, an English Pub. It was great. Really good crowd of people and the food and wine was very good. We had a big bowl of chili con carne, fries, and breaded prawns. The place was packed. As I sat there at our outdoor table, I noticed a lady around our age sitting with two men. I smiled, she smiled, I raised my wine glass, she raised her wine glass, and we mouthed cheers from thirty-feet away. Naturally this caught the interest of her husband and brother-in-law, so they (Irish) all raised their glasses in a distant toast. I’m sure you can guess what happened next… we ended up at their table for the rest of the night. They enjoyed teasing me about being of Scottish descent, saying the Scotts are very tight with their money. Naturally Joe loved that and immediately joined forces against me. Super fun night.

We wandered all over the middle of town and so far, I’m not impressed. It’s not as neat and tidy as I’m used to. The streets and promenades aren’t as clean. I haven’t seen a street cleaner person with their rolling garbage can yet. Both Nazare and São Martinho do Porto were immaculate. We did find a Vodophone shop, so I’m loaded up for data. At least they have a barbershop/salon/tattoo parlor/&body piercing shop!

There’s a quaint little fishing village church. It’s Catholic, so it has that bowl of water right inside the door to do the sign-of-the-cross, but instead of a bowl it was a giant seashell. All of the statues inside depict the importance of the fishermen’s lives.

The food at the restaurants and cafés in Armação de Pêra are all great so far. Lots of variety of places… Japanese, Indian, Italian, Irish, British, etc.. And so far I haven’t had a bad glass of wine. So, this begs the question; how important is food and wine to me? Can I change? What are we willing to sacrifice? We will have to make this decision unless we can find a place that has both the classiness and culture of the Portuguese and the variety of food and wine of the expats. I’ll continue to explore this dilemma in the up-coming blogs.

Joe discovered a ridge trail that I absolutely love. I go for my morning walk, Joe goes part way and picks a cove to work out in, and then I join him to put my hot feet in the freezing water. By-the-way, Joe says it’s not freezing, but it is. I can get in to about my hips. For those of you who like ice baths (Izzy, Caleb) you’d love it. I love the rock formations with all their little caves. This is the best thing about the Algarve. We can’t find an outdoor gym here… that’s a big disappointment. I get bored working out in the front room.

So, right now São Martinho is our favorite, but Armação is growing on us. Especially because I finally found a jar of Skippy peanut butter at yet another huge grocery store. That makes five  grocery stores here in walking distance. That’s a serious consideration, and two of those have extensive meat counters. One even has precooked rotisserie chicken—granted it’s a fifteen minute walk, but we can deal with that. One of the cool things about trying to find all these grocery stores is we get to see the non-tourism neighborhoods.

We’re going to take road trips to other nearby towns to explore this region. Today the plan is to go to Carvoeiro. We were going to go yesterday, but it was Portugal’s Independence Day. We were afraid a lot of the restaurants and shops would be closed. I think we were wrong. Nothing was closed here in Armação. The only excitement was a huge group of motorcyclists going through town. Several hundred of them. I know that touring the five hours between Spain and the west coast, Sagres, is very popular with cruisers, so it may have been one of the big groups who travel together. Whatever the motive, it was a sight to see while munching our hamburgers.