Portugal Pics (2) - Algarve

After spending the first few days in Lisbon we headed south to the region in Portugal known as Algarve. It was about a 4 hour bus ride from Lisbon to Lagos, which aside from the blaring loud video program featuring some kind of Portuguese version of the 3 stooges was rather pleasant. We arrived in Lagos around mid-afternoon which gave us plenty of time to buy some food and catch another bus to Espiche to the camping area where we had reservations.

Rather than camping this year we decided to spend a few more pennies and saved some stress on our backs (not schlurping around camping gear) and stayed at a bungalow at the camping area. Although the days were around 15C the nights were still rather chilly and it was nice to be in a bungalow than sleeping on the cold ground. The bungalow was great, equipped with its own shower and toilet, sink, 2 burner stove, toaster, refrigerator and heating! We reserved a 2 person bungalow but for some reason got upgraded to a bigger one for the same price. This is a pic of Morten in the dining area.













The first night we checked out Espiche, what we soon found out is that it is a summer town, and thus pretty dead in early January - except for the dogs. While walking the quiet road between the camping area and the town I had the bejeezus scared out of me on more than one occasion due to dogs suddenly starting to bark from 2 meters away. Thankfully they were all behind locked gated front yard areas. Sheesh!

The nearest town of any real size to Espiche is Praia da Luz, it was about 10 min away by bus, but up a BIG hill so the bus was a necessity. Praia means beach in Portugese, and Luz I am guessing means light. We spent one day wandering around this pretty little town. We also took a long walk along the coast for a few kilometers and back. In this area the coast is really rocky and absolutely beautiful, check out this view!











But in walking this area one has to be quite careful as some of the rock areas are said to be a bit unstable from the waves eroding the soft rock near the beach and then later the top of the cliffs falling down as their lower level foundation is slowly eroded. Clearly the locals don't pay a whole lot of attention to the warning signs. This is a picture of me under one such warning sign that has been damaged - see that path going right under it out to the water? Hilarious!













After 4-5 hours of walking up the coast and back we enjoyed a beautiful sunset in Praia de Luz before heading back to Espiche to make some dinner. We also took some time to build a sand castle!













We also spent one day while in Algarve wandering around Lagos, a quite nice city I thought. The town itself, like much of Algarve, is probably much more busy in the summer. We had fantastic weather on our day there wandering around the little streets. We also went down to some of the beach areas just at the outskirts of town. This was the first time we could get down to the bottom of these rocky areas rather than just being at the top of them. Morten found this place to eat lunch but I was a little too nervous to climb up and eat there...