The Vacation of a Lifetime - Part 3

Note: This is part three of a four-part series about my 2016 vacation in Portugal. This part focuses on our brief side trip to southwestern Spain. Links to the other parts of the series can be found in the text and at the end of this post.

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“And now for something completely different” (almost).

The third phase of the trip took us away from the coast, beaches and seafood and into the hotter, dryer interior of southwestern Spain. But it was only for a day; we couldn’t wait to get back to the ocean again, even if only for a few hours.

And during that brief excursion into the hills of Andalusia, I had another “what must it have been like long ago” moment. Our one-day trip took us only into the Spanish provinces of Huelva and Sevilla, with the main destination being the city of Seville. But it was in the rolling hills near our guesthouse that I got to thinking again about the past.

I am not a city person. I’ve mentioned it on this blog on more than one occasion, particularly in this post. My heart finds contentment in open space, wild country, places where nature still rules and where its power is evident everywhere you look. So while Lisbon was a great city, and I truly enjoyed taking in the sights and sounds (and tastes), I was actually happier after we left Lisbon and spent time in more natural areas of the west coast and Algarve.

The same was true in Spain. There are some interesting things to see in Seville, notably the Plaza de Español, but overall, the city didn’t impress me much, and I felt an almost constant low level of stress just being there. It was like doing the obligatory city tourist thing but really just wanting to leave and get into the countryside. And, except for one bad incident, I did feel better when we got out of the city.

We began the morning in Portimao, as I mentioned last time, by visiting a quaint café perched high above a picturesque stretch of beach. Then we got in the car and set off for Seville. The drive took just a couple of hours and was fairly scenic in its own right; for much of the drive, the ocean remained our companion, looming off to our right. Then we were in the city.

(Crossing from Portugal into Spain)

Seville

This was one day in which, instead of helping us find the best way to get someplace, Google Maps was determined to make life more difficult. I had picked out one of the main points in the center of the city as our destination and had the navigator give us a track. But something went wrong when we got into the center, and GM sent us into a labyrinth of narrow alleys. They seemed to get tighter and tighter as we got deeper and deeper into it. We feared that we might get stuck or, even worse, scratch the car.

My friend was behind the wheel, and she did a great job getting us through the maze. We tucked the mirrors tight against the car (we didn’t need to see behind us anyway) and worked on finding our way out. Finally, we asked a local how to get to a main road, and with his advice, we finally got out of there. Whew!

Soon, we found the area where we wanted to be and located an underground parking garage. That done, we set off to see what we could see. We found ourselves near a small park called Jardim del Cristina and explored some busy streets and squares in the area. Our exploration took us to the banks of a wide canal that forms a branch of the Guadalquivir River. There, we took a short boat cruise on which some of the main sites were explained in several European languages.

After the boat ride, we returned to the area of the small park and square we had first discovered and visited some souvenir shops. We saw a lot of cafes, including two very familiar eateries: Burger King and Dunkin Donuts Coffee. I was hungry, so I broke with my usual vacation tradition of eschewing American fast food and got a Whopper. It was actually really good – better than in the USSA.

From there, we went on a walking tour of some of the main attractions in the central area of the city: Catedral de Sevilla, Plaza del Triunfo, Patronato del Real Alcazar del Sevilla, Real Alcazar del Sevilla and Jardines Alcazares,  

To be honest, there’s not a lot to say about these places, just show the pictures. Yes, they were impressive in their own way, but they really didn’t do a lot for me. The one place that was quite beautiful and definitely got my attention was Plaza de España de Sevilla. The combination of the architecture and color of the buildings, together with the water channels in the plaza were quite unique and interesting. But I was a bit disappointed to learn that it was not built in some historical time several centuries go, but in the 1920s. As European heritage sites go, it’s just a baby.

There were some beautiful parks surrounding these places, the most impressive being Parque de Maria Luisa next to Plaza de España. It was nice to walk through the parks, and they certainly add a lot to the charm of the city. But I was itching to go; I wanted to reach Hotel La Posada before dark.

Trying to Beat the Dark

We finally got out of Seville, and it was a lot easier than getting into the city had been. At first, the drive was really pleasant, especially as we left the city and suburbs behind and began to climb into the hills. We saw a lot of really beautiful scenery in these low, dry hills with their unique and open blend of low trees and shrubbery, and we passed through a number of quaint towns and villages.

In several areas, we saw what looked like Spanish fighting bulls grazing on either side of the road. I confirmed later that the area is a prime region for raising these powerful animals. I wondered how they safely collect them for transport to the ring.

That part of the drive was nice, but as the light was fading, the troubles began. Google Maps put us on the wrong course toward the guesthouse, and we wound up on a “road” that turned into little more than a path. As I wrote in Part One of this series, we got stuck in a bad spot, and maneuvering out of it was very difficult, especially in the dimming light. In trying to turn us around so that we could head back to the main road, I wound up scratching a corner of the BMW.

It was on me because I was behind the wheel, and this made me angry. If my friend had been behind the wheel and the same thing happened, I would have been a lot calmer about it and done my best to make her not feel bad about it. I could have excused it if she had been driving, but for me to do it was inexcusable. And to make matter worse, it was getting dark, I was already frustrated at being lost, and we were no closer to figuring out how to get to the hotel.

We ran into a couple of local people who were able to tell us how to find Hotel la Posada. It turned out that not only had Google Maps let us down, but the signage for the hotel was terrible. The irony was that the access road to the hotel was right next to a place we had stopped at in the last village before we turned off the main road. There was a tiny sign pointing to the hotel, but we had been unable to see it.

We found the place and got checked in, but tension still ruled the moment. There was nothing to do but shower and go to bed – and hope that the next day would be better.

I didn’t sleep well, partly due to the stress and partly due to a bad cough I had developed the day before. At some point before sun up, I couldn’t take it anymore, so I went out for a walk. Walking in the quiet of the predawn dark was calming. It helped.

I also made a friend: a local cat decided that he liked the way I pet him and decided to follow me around. He followed me back to the bungalow and even came inside for a while. But he was disappointed that we didn’t have any food for him, so he left.

A Morning Walk into the Past

Hotel la Posada’s breakfast was pretty good, and after that we took a morning walk in the hills. For me, this was the best part of the side trip to Spain. It was a warm, sunny morning, and the morning light easily filled the spaces between the low, sparse trees. At the start of our walk, we encountered a flock of sheep being brought in from the hills. That was a nice start, but a bit later, the screams of pigs being slaughtered on the other side of a hill took a bit of the charm off the morning.

There was a point in the hills when I again got to thinking about what the place might have looked, sounded and felt like hundreds of years ago. I imagined that it was probably a quiet place populated mainly by simple farmers who, like today, raised their sheep and hogs and probably cultivated olive trees and other crops. I suspected, or perhaps hoped, that war and other kinds of conflict rarely visited those hills. Naïve, perhaps.

I imagined travelers on horseback or leading a loaded donkey making their way through the hills. Perhaps they were carrying goods for sale, or maybe they were just moving on to a new place. The possible reasons were as open to the imagination as was the vision itself. But to journey through these sunny hills in those days must have been wonderfully peaceful.

After a while, we made our way back to the bungalow; it was time to pack up, check out and head back to Portugal. We were in a hurry to get back to the ocean, so we drove straight through, pausing only for a few minutes to take some pictures at the border between Portugal and Spain.

And Back to the Ocean

We wanted to find a great beach in a place that would afford us a reasonable drive back to Lisbon. We found it in Porto Covo, which is just south of Sines where we began our love affair with Portugal’s southern coast. When we got to Porto Covo, we found a good place to park, checked out the surf and beaches, then walked into the town to shop for some souvenirs and, of course, have lunch.

The rest of the day was for the beach. We chose a small beach called Praia do Banho, which had few people, wonderful views, and excellent surf. Like so many of southern Portugal’s beaches, millennia of pounding by the Atlantic surf against sedimentary rock formed even before dinosaurs roamed the Earth has carved beautiful little beaches with rock formations jutting out of the water and interesting little “cave” passageways under the cliffs and even to adjoining beaches. One can only marvel at the creative precision with which nature has crafted these magnificent formations.

On the beach, I found myself able to just let any stress from the past day slip away. We were already more than halfway through the vacation, and I wanted to savor it. The cough I had developed a few days earlier made it prudent to stay out of the water, but I was still able to enjoy the sun, salt air, and just the feeling of the ocean and everything around me.

Finally, it was time to pack up and drive to our overnight guesthouse in Lima. We managed to catch part of the sunset off to our left as we drove north to Lima, and we also got a great view as we drove across the Vasco de Gama bridge into the city.

The next morning, we would be off to the airport and on our way to the Azores.

In Part One: Lisbon, Sintra and Cascais

In Part Two: The Southern Coast and Algarve

In Part Four: Sao Miguel in the Azores.

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The Vacation of a Lifetime - Part 2

Note: This is part two of a four-part series about my 2016 vacation in Portugal. This part focuses on our time along the coast of southern Portugal, particularly in the Algarve. Links to the other parts of the series can be found in the text and at the end of this post.

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Traveling Back in Time

Imagine you are living in southern Portugal in the late 14^th century, just a few decades before Portugal kicked off the European Age of Discovery. You are sitting on the very tip of a small spot of land, a cape that juts southwest into the Atlantic Ocean. It is the most southwesterly point of Europe, and everyone calls it the “end of the Earth.” You look out at the vast, powerful ocean, and you wonder.

Looking over your left shoulder, to the east, you know that along the coast, men can sail safely to Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean Sea. But that sea and the trade routes through it have long been controlled by the Venetians, and there are Arab pirates as well. So it is not a safe route to the riches of the Far East. But at least it is somewhat known to experienced sailors, and fishermen ply the coastal waters toward the Kingdom of Sevilla every day.

As you look directly south, you understand that a sailor would eventually come to the coast of a place called Africa. But going straight south in the small boats of the time would not be safe because the ocean is too big. You would have to sail to Gibraltar, cross the strait, and then follow the coast to the west.

But no one has safely done so for very far. The Islamic Moors, who had only recently been booted out of Iberia in the Reconquista, still control that north coast of Africa, and no one has sailed southward along that coast and come back alive. No one knows how big this place called Africa really is or what lies to the south. There are stories of great deserts, dangerous seas, horrible beasts and monsters. Since no one has come back alive, the stories must be true.

Looking straight ahead (southwest) and off to the right (west), you understand that there is nothing except the ocean. No one knows what is out there. The few brave men who have tried to venture far westward in their small ships have never returned. There are many stories of great storms and terrible sea monsters that can swallow up whole ships. Everyone says that the world ends somewhere out there, but no one really knows.

It is the great mystery of that time: what is really out there?

A Mystery No More

That spot of land is Sagres Point (pronounced Sagresh), and on the afternoon of 15 September, as I looked out from the point and later from a nearby beach, I tried to imagine what someone from those days might have been thinking as he or she gazed out across the Atlantic. But that’s impossible. Today we have the benefit of 600 years of accumulated knowledge, and with the world being so much “smaller” now, it is hard to imagine how huge and imposing it must have seemed to someone in the late 1300s.

In our modern Internet era, we can just check out Google Earth, but back then, they had only a few incomplete and woefully inaccurate charts that were carefully kept by a few top navigators and the powerful elite of the day. Most people had never seen a map of the known world and had no comprehension even of what the known world looked like, much less the great unknown that lay beyond. But knowledge was about to build.

In the early 1400s, Portuguese mariners discovered Madeira off the coast of Africa and then the islands of the Azores. Soon, under the direction of Prince Henry the Navigator, and with a new kind of ship called a caravel, they were successfully navigating the western coast of Africa. Eventually they made it all the way to Africa’s southern tip and discovered a new route across the Indian Ocean to the riches of the Far East.

They also pushed west into the Atlantic, and there is evidence that they had already reached the coast of Brazil even before Columbus made his famous journey on Spain’s behalf in 1492. Portuguese fishermen were working the Grand Banks and coast of North America long before the English and French began arriving there. The discovery and “downsizing” of the world was underway.

The Power of the Atlantic

Even as I tried and failed to imagine what someone so long ago must have felt looking out at the ocean from Sagres Point, I was still in awe of the greatness of the ocean. I have known the North Atlantic since my childhood in Massachusetts, and I have seen it from the rocky cliffs of western Ireland. The Atlantic has always seemed cold, rough and powerful, ready to smash those who intrude upon its waters and take them down to the bottom.

(This is the western coast of Ireland)

By comparison, the Pacific has never seemed as untamed. I have lived by Pacific shores in California, Japan, and on the island of Guam. I’ve also spent time along the coast of Peru, and in most cases, that ocean has lived up to its name, “Pacific,” when compared to the often angry Atlantic.

This is not to say that the Pacific can't throw a stormy fit from time to time. It surely can. And it's not as though the Atlantic doesn’t feature beautiful beaches where one can safely swim and experience the awesomeness of the ocean. It does. Cape Cod, the coasts of the Carolinas and Florida, and many other places can attest to that. But no place I have seen offers such a combination of perfect beaches visited by the raw power of the North Atlantic as the beaches of southern Portugal.

14 September – The West Coast

When we left the Lisbon area on 14 September, we drove first to Sines (pronounced “Sinesh”) on the west coast, about halfway between Lisbon and the southern Algarve region. We made a brief visit to a beach called Praia de Sao Torpes, where we first dipped our feet into the Atlantic. Here, we also stopped for a fantastic seafood lunch at a place called Restaurante Kalux.

Our ultimate goal for the day was to get to our next guesthouse in Portimao on the south coast that evening, but we were in no hurry. We meandered southward keeping as close to the coast as we could. Along the way, we came to another beautiful beach, Praia Samoqueira, where to our surprise we found a small colony of ostriches.

That day’s plan also included finding a beach called Praia de Odeceixe, which we had been told was one of the most spectacular in Portugal. It took a bit of cajoling of our Google Maps navigator, but we finally found the route that took us along a river that emptied right into the ocean at that beach. We were not disappointed.

Before arriving at the beach, we had a stunning view of the winding river with the ocean in the background, and as we approached the shore, we could see where the fresh water of the river merged with the surging ocean. The beach was framed on three sides by rugged rocky cliffs, broken only by the river that had created a valley to the beach over thousands of years.

It was low tide, so the beach was a bit more open, and you could see where the waterline would be when the tide was in. The tidal area had a bit of a bulge that allowed the surf to send water around it. This was where it merged with the river. At high tide, I suspect the river emptied into the ocean more directly.

The beach faced directly to the open ocean, which created a stronger surf with waves that crashed upon the several rock formations that jutted up from the bottom just a short distance from the shore and pounded the bottoms of the cliffs on either side of the beach. The surf was strong and active upon the beach itself, which made it all the more enjoyable to walk in. We spent the remainder of the late afternoon on the beach and in the surf.

Even though we had caught a dramatic sunset just the day before at Cabo da Roca, we decided to stay and hope that the sun would set in an equally beautiful fashion at Odeceixe. Again, we were not disappointed.

Once the sun had finally sunk below the horizon, we packed up our things and set off for Portimao and our next guesthouse. The guesthouse there was not one of our favorites, so I won’t spend much time discussing it. It was pretty late, so we got ourselves organized and crashed knowing that we would have a very active day starting the next morning.

Lagos and Sagres

The next day, 15 September, was all about the south coast. We had booked a morning kayak trip along the coast near the city of Lagos (pronounced Lagosh) to view the many caves and grottos that had been carved by the ocean over millennia and are only accessible by boat.

We joined a group of other tourists from many countries who had also booked for that morning and, two people to a boat, set off on our excursion. For more than three hours we paddled along the coast, going in and out of caves, some of which were also open at the top, allowing the light of day to illuminate the rock formations within. We also spent about 30 minutes on a small beach and did a bit of snorkeling.

As Lagos is on the south coast and has some small capes to buffet the swells of the deep Atlantic, the water we traversed was relatively calm. It was almost like being on the Mediterranean Sea instead of the Atlantic Ocean. It was a bit of a challenge to paddle hard for three hours, but we really had no problems, and we enjoyed it immensely.

After our morning in Lagos, the plan was to spend the rest of the day at the beach. And we wanted to find a great beach. I was also determined to see Sagres, the “end of the Earth.” The drive from Lagos to Sagres was short, so we were there in no time.

We made our way as close as possible to the Forteleza de Sagres (Fort of Sagres) on Sagres Point, a great old fortification that was built to guard that strategic southwestern tip of Portugal. We walked around so that we could see both sides of the point: the western side where the full power of the Atlantic casts its waves upon rocks and beaches, and the eastern side that is protected from the deep ocean and prevailing winds and, thus, much calmer. It was here where I looked out and tried to imagine myself more than six centuries back in time.

After looking around the point and taking a lot of pictures (of course), we decided to go into Sagres for lunch – seafood, of course. We also checked out a number of souvenir shops.

Then it was time for the beach. We decided to go for Praia do Tonel on the western side where the surf was more robust. Tonel Beach is a popular spot for surfers due to its large waves. Here, we enjoyed the water, the sun, the views of cliffs and crashing surf, and the ability to just relax and be – not think, just be. Oh… and take pictures, of course.

By the end of the day we were ready to head back to Portimao and get a good rest before our next day’s drive to Spain. After two stunning sunsets, we decided we didn’t need a third, but that evening in Portimao, we were treated to another natural beauty: the awesome rise of an almost full moon over the ocean.

The next day, we prepared to drive into Spain to visit Seville. But first, we found a cozy little café by the sea for morning coffee. My travel companion had found the place during her run earlier that morning. We got to see that Portimao itself has beautiful beaches and a rugged coastline that is worthy in itself. If I ever come back to the Algarve, I would definitely spent more time in both Portimao and Lagos.

After that, we were off to Spain, which I’ll describe next time. But it was not the last time that we enjoyed the ocean in Portugal. We loved the oceanside beaches so much that after our time in Spain, we decided to head straight back to the coast before returning to Lisbon for the last part of our trip, our visit to Sao Miguel in the Azores. But I’ll write about our afternoon at Porto Covo next time as well.

In Part One: Lisbon, Sintra and Cascais.

In Part Three: Seville and Porto Covo.

In Part Four: Sao Miguel in the Azores

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How Did it Come Down to This?

The economy is a complete mess.

The economy has been bad for eight years, good jobs are fewer and harder to find, more people than ever are on some kind of government assistance, the middle class is shrinking while the income disparity between top and bottom is the greatest in at least generations. Companies that should be creating jobs for American workers are leaving the country because of high taxation and severe overregulation, and we have an albatross of a healthcare system that is making it all worse. The nation is almost 20 TRILLION dollars in debt, and the dollar could go bust any time.

The world, and our place in it, is a complete mess.

America's standing in the world is the lowest it's been since at least the Carter administration, perhaps even longer than that. We've had a woefully ineffective foreign policy that has allowed Russia, Iran and China to step up and create extremely dangerous hotspots in the world (one of which, Ukraine, I live in now).

An uncontrollable rouge nation, North Korea, has been allowed to develop nuclear weapons and continues testing the means to deliver them. An even more dangerous rogue state, Iran, is on the verge of doing the same. And in the midst of all this world danger, America's military strength continues to fall to dangerous levels, both in terms of size and resources, and preparedness.

The combination of Bush's unwise intervention in Iraq, together with Obama's and Clinton's fumbling with Iraq, Libya, Syria and other places, has helped to create the most dangerous religious-extremist fascist organization, ISIS, the world has seen, and this organization reaches out to visit death upon the innocent all over the world.

Europe is being destroyed by the uncontrolled migration of muslims into its heart, and America is reeling under an onslaught of almost similarly unchecked illegal immigration while having a legal immigration system that makes no sense.

Our society is a complete mess.

American society has become coarser, more superficial, more divided and more hateful than at any time in my life. People harbor deep hatred, almost ready to kill, over political, religious and other views. Most people are made blissfully numb to what's happening by the pablum of sitcoms, reality shows and other garbage on television, or they numb themselves on the Internet. What little information they do acquire before they go off and do important things like voting is carefully crafted propaganda dished out by the news media and Hollywood.

Those who do actually pay attention and care are at the end of our collective rope with the self-enriching, do-nothing-else establishment politicians, and their mega-rich corporate supporters, but we are afraid to give control of government to those who might actually get something positive accomplished. We're brainwashed to believe that only "experienced, professional leaders" can do the job. And although we were duped into giving the presidency for the past eight years to someone who was neither experienced, professional nor a leader, we still swallow the myth that third-parties and other "outsiders" are wasted votes.

Too many people have been taught by a corrupt education and media establishment that somehow they "have a right" to things they have not earned. Someone (the government, society... just someone else) owes them stuff simply because they exist. The unwarranted sense of entitlement has superseded the ideal that you should work for what you get and that no one owes you anything. Cynical politicians increase this sense of entitlement and use it to their own advantages by promising free stuff (at the expense of taxpayers, of course).

Our system is a complete mess.

So... we have all these serious problems. And we have a major election in just a month. And what are our choices? The two most flawed, unpopular and wholly reprehensible candidates the major parties have ever thrust upon us in the same election. These two morons spend all their time digging up dirt on the other, talking about the other, and making their campaigns only about how bad the other one is (and to be honest, they both have a lot of material there).

We have all these serious problems, but the two losers we have on the ballot are NOT addressing them. And the media are not forcing them to address the issues. The mainstream media have only one mission: protect Clinton and destroy Trump. Other media are all about defeating Clinton, despite the truly head-shaking statements and actions from Trump.

When it comes to critical issues, both candidates and the media are basically sitting around with their thumbs up their... I mean, in their mouths. Do you know what Clinton or Trump will REALLY do about ISIS? What about Russia, China or other problems in the world? Of course not, neither of them really has a clue. Neither of them has a truly viable plan to reduce the debt and make the economy work to its potential, to create good jobs. Trump talks and talks about bringing jobs back, but I don't see a real plan there. And Clinton just wants to tax businesses more and drive more jobs away (and give away more free stuff, of course).

Neither of these clowns has any idea of how to solve the many problems the country faces and bring back prosperity and strength to the nation. When I look back at the field of 17 that started the Republican primary process, I simply cannot believe that primary voters believed Trump was the best of the bunch. He may well have been the worst. If they really wanted an outsider (good idea) why not Ben Carson or Carly Fiorina? There were some good, experienced governors to choose from. But they gave us the megamouth.

And there certainly had to be at least one better candidate on the Democratic side than the cackling joke that party has forced upon us. But the Clinton political machine cleared the field even before the primaries started. Only Bernie Sanders had the gumption to go up against her, but he was swimming upstream from the start, and in the end, he sold out to that same political machine.

An ugly process begets ugly choices.

To be honest, some of the very best and brightest on both sides of the political landscape simply did not want to run. I have one person in mind, a woman, a black woman, who I think could be a fantastic president. But she did not want to put herself through the process. Considering how ugly it is, I guess I can't blame her.

And that's the rub: the process is so ugly, that only the ugly (not in appearance, but in heart and mind) need apply. Only the worst sort of egotistical, power-hungry, in-it-for-themselves, borderline psychotics run for president. This election proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

There is going to be a debate on television tonight between Trump and Clinton. It will be the second of three debates, and I have no doubt that important issues, things that really matter to the future of the nation and the lives of its people, will again be pushed to the sideline as the candidates castigate one another over private remarks made 15 years ago, hacked emails, the sexual shenanigans of one candidate's husband, and other matters that really just don't matter.

And in a month, millions of Americans, most with no real understanding of the stakes and no information other than what their favorite sitcom star happened to say or what they heard in a 20-second commercial, will go to the polls and cast votes for either Clinton or Trump. A few, acting on principle, will select the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, or the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein. But those two won't make a difference.

For the next four years, barring some completely unforeseen circumstance that delivers us a President Pence or Kaine, we will have to endure having one of those two losers in the Oval Office. On the one hand, it can't be much worse than what we have had to endure for the past eight years, perhaps even longer; but on the other hand, we've really never had two choices as bad as these (and we have had NO good choices for decades).

No matter who wins the election in November, the losers will be the American people, all of us, who did not demand better than the choices we were given.

The past eight years might have been just the opening act of America's decline.

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