Kiwi Roaming

One of the highlights of the Algarve is a visit to the Benagil Cave so we booked a tour, which took about 2 hours and stopped at loads of amazing sites along the way. The boat seated about 20 people, we were issued life jackets and were seated in the order we booked the tour in from the front, so we were in the 4th row. The tour we booked started in Portimão at the port there next to an old abandoned convent, and as it turns out just near the shuttle bus for the MotoGP.

The tour took us along the coastline north past beautiful beaches and along the cliff lined coast. It was amazing seeing the cliffs up close and from below like this, they are 20m-40m high so loom above you. The rock has wonderfully coloured layers and the waves surging against them bring out different colours. The cliffs are a sandstone so they are full of holes, caves and caverns. Our boat driver had incredible control of the boat, navigating the surging tide, taking us into caves and out again without hitting the walls and avoiding other boats along the way.

We stopped every few minutes to see a specific feature and to give us an opportunity to take photos with out the boat moving. It was kinda like being on a Hamilton Jet ride, fast in a straight line, lots of bouncing around and for many of the people quite exhilarating. Luckily I didn’t feel sea sick at all cause it was pretty calm.

We also stopped at the bay where Steve and I had walked down through the tunnel and walked on the clifftop, it was cool seeing people on the cliffs high above us, in some areas they have a boardwalk and railings – unlike where we walked which was completely open and had sheer drops.

End of the world – until the 15th century sailors were scared to sail past Sagres and Cape St. Vincent for fear their ships would drop off the edge of the world. Henry the Navigator not only explored past this point but also built a fortress to protect his territories from attacks from the African continent across from there. Only a 30 minute drive from our apartment we decided to go explore the end of the world.

The peninsula has been considered significant by everyone who has inhabited the region, the Moors, the Romans, Portuguese and Spanish at different times, mostly for spiritual reasons. The cliffs are 40M high and the land is so arid, virtually nothing grows there, not to mention it’s really windswept. In one of the bays below us there were tens if not hundreds of surfers sitting on the boards. On the edges of the cliffs there were fishermen casting their lines from really precarious positions on the rocks into the sea 40M below! they seemed to be catching a steady flow of small fish, so successful place to fish from.

The fortress has been restored and new buildings including a museum built inside the walls. It stretches the width of the peninsular with no way past on either side, the views from there are fantastic and we really enjoyed how different to anything at home the whole area is. Towards the tip there are holes through the rock down to the sea, worn away by water and weather over hundreds of years, now fenced off of course. One of them now has a circular maze built around it to amplify the sound of the waves and it’s very cool as you walk through the maze until you reach the small hole in the centre covered by a grate.

The drive there was mostly on the N124 which is like SH1 in NZ in terms of quality and has as many roundabouts too (but hardly any traffic lights) so flows really well. The landscape is very open with only grape vines and orange trees occasionally in fields. We drove past a few camping grounds which seemed to be in the middle of nowhere – one of our observations for campervans in Portugal is the places people can park are either a paved carpark (like the one at the fortress) or beachside carpark with no facilities whatsoever. On the way back we had a wee drive through other Lagos suburbs that are all apartment buildings with many many new ones under construction with cranes everywhere. Most of these might have glimpses of the sea but are well back from the shore and the town so I hope there will be shops and food places created alongside this accommodation.