"It seemed like a
good idea at the time!" I had been overheard saying later in the day.
Earlier in the day, things were progressing swimmingly! I took a train from my
home base in Olhão to Vila Real de San Antonio, the last Portuguese town before
the border with Spain. As soon as I step onto a train, it feels as if I am Marco
Polo, off to discover another part of the world. And so I was about to do just
that!
Speaking of Olhão, I've been living here for two weeks. It's a beautiful tourist spot with tons of old world restaurants and cafes, nestled along meandering, cobblestone alleys, mixed in with a handful of more modern shops and boutiques. The restaurants' tables spill out onto the narrow alleyways, filling the air with delicious aromas and lots of Portuguese chit chat. The summer rush of tourists, sun worshippers and riff raff have cleared out by mid-September, leaving a pleasant mix of locals, regulars, and the odd wanderer. Did you know that all of the many kilometers of sidewalks here are laid down by hand, piece by piece, made up of millions of off-white coloured fragments of more-or-less square-shaped flat stone tiles? The sidewalks are therefore consistently uneven, making it interesting to simply go for a stroll. I stumble at least once every few minutes of walking. I think this is why I am not the only one who has decided to walk on the road, just a few inches over from the sidewalk! Worse, the sidewalks are not limited to pedestrians: Bikes, scooters, motorcycles and sometimes even cars treat the sidewalks as their own ticket to freedom, to be used whenever practical so pedestrians must simply dodge the many moving and parked obstacles.
I cycled the first ten kms of today's 80 km ride out of Vila Real, heading west, through a nature reserve which I admit was spectacular. I saw some hundreds of flamingos in the marshes, not quite as pink as the plastic ones in your neighbour's front yard. Still, they are rather majestic the way the stand around on one leg and chat with one another, oblivious to their amazing pink plumage. In fact, these flamingos become shockingly pink when they fly -- this is the real eye candy.
No, the fun started, when the digital navigator on my phone directed me onto a marshy area ten kms beyond the nature reserve's end. There are a lot of marshes along at least half the length of the Algarve, so I wasn't too concerned. It was mostly packed dirt, ochre in colour with lots of bushes and cactus growing all over the place. I saw hundreds of crabs, mostly all having a white stripe on one claw. They'd very quickly scurry away when sensing my presence, crawling sideways of course, before finding their subterranean homes and then dropping down inside them. About 100 km of the Algarve coastline, Olhão included, is protected by barrier islands. The waters between the coast and these islands are known as the Ria Formosa. Much of this area is mostly underwater at high tide, and half of it dry at low tide. It was low tide at the time so I was able to follow the supposed route that my cell phone application was indicating. It seemed like a good idea at the time... though it was then that I began considering that I was possibly no longer on a bike trail at all.
Soon enough, pedaling
through the sandy marsh and shallow pools of water gave way to pedaling
slightly uphill on what became a cliffside trail, more likely a trail for
hikers, not cyclists. I quickly became a hiker, too, and dismounted my
bicycle as riding a bike on such a narrow trail had become risky business: one
slip to the left meant tumbling down a hundred feet to a hard landing
below.
Given the littoral geography, Olhão's beach fanatics have to take a short ferry ride over to the nearest barrier island, Culatra Island, which actually has a small permanent community with its own little school, some makeshift cafés and beachside restaurants. The streets that the houses are set on, are really just walking paths as there are nearly no vehicles to be seen. There is a thin layer of sand everywhere underfoot when walking about. Robinson Crusoe would feel right at home! The island's entire perimeter is covered in fine, beige sand, no rocks or pebbles anywhere. The south side of the island is exposed directly to the Atlantic Ocean where the water is cool and the waves are wonderful. However on the north side, facing Olhão, the water belongs technically to the Ria Formosa, and is always warmer.
Pushing forward, I navigate the cliffs and
end up back on a beach. But very soon arrive at a small river that must be
crossed. The alternative is to follow yet another dirt terra cotta-coloured
path uphill a bit to hopefully intersect a real road which likely had a bridge
to cross this river.
Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, and
I am now crossing the river by jumping from stone to stone all the while
carrying my bike. The presumed path on the far side appears to be camouflaged as all the
gaps between the tightly spaced thorny bushes and prickly cactus look like
paths to me. There is no apparent way to proceed and after ten minutes of being
prickled from all sides, but barely making any forward movement, I finally
conclude that it's time to retrace my steps. Dragging my bike back through the
dense brush took twice as long as I couldn't find my way! A half hour later I
am back at the little river. But guess what? The tide has been coming in and the river
was flowing backwards, upstream! The water deeper, the river wider, the jumping stones
are submerged now, invisible. No challenge is too great and off come my shoes
so I can wade across to the side I started from.
If you think I am stressed out or
frustrated, think again. The fun is just beginning... I climb the
aforementioned trail, jump on my bike and start pedaling, remember I am on a
mountain bike! It feels very difficult to move forward. Maybe I am stressed and
fatigued after all!? Wrong again: the cause is a flat tire, likely due to a
cactus thorn that pierced right through my thick treaded tires! When I
finally exit the dirt path, I am miles from a bike repair shop on a quiet road,
under a broiling hot mid-day sun, running low on water, and now must either
walk my bike for at least an hour or sit down and cry. What would Marco Polo
do?
To find out... stay tuned!
Barry the wanderer.
