Day 1 - Getting Used To The "Expedition"

---

Portimao, Monday afternoon

After lunch we docked in at the harbor of Portimao, still in Portugal. Portimao is a small city in the Algarve region. The predominant industry here is catering to the large number of tourists and second home (condo) owners. With pleasant weather year round, Portimao has become attractive for upper middle class people. It is certainly not Cannes or Monaco, but is seemingly uniformly nice. There’s a terrific beach that we passed on the way into port.

There were several land excursion choices and we selected a three hour hike and bread tasting. The hike was to be across beautiful hillsides to look at rock ruins from the Neolithic period, called Megaliths, followed by a tasting of “tibornia, freshly made, wood-fired bread with regional olive and garlic along with aromatic herbs cakes and teas.” Sounds cool doesn’t it. Well it was sort of cool. First there was the one-hour bus ride continuously narrated by a local guide. She was a sight to be seen. Her voice was like the Google maps voice; calm, continuous, monotone albeit with a Portuguese accent. I have no idea of anything she said. Fran was just happy to be on dry land. By the way, except for being a little sea sick, a lot constipated, having a hacking cough, full of food allergies and getting asthma for the first time, Fran’s doing great on this trip. A bus ride and hike was just what the doctor ordered. Reaching our destination we began the hike by walking under an overpass onto a trail and up steeply to a high point where there was this big rock, our first a Megalith. The story of the Megalith as described in infinite detail was that this rock didn’t belong there. It was from someplace else, moved there 7,000 years ago. How? Nobody knows. The guide explained patiently when I said it looked like a rock that yest, while it looks like a rock now, it used to look like a penis. No, I’m not kidding. Megalith's are phallic things or the researchers just think about phalli way too much and jump to conclusions. Looking at the poor thing now, all worn down and fallen over, it could use a dose or eight of rock Viagra. It got better. According to our guide, the fairly smooth shape on the side was used for women to slide down on the hope they’d get pregnant. I rolled my eyes. How the f*&k could anyone know that? We walked some more in a field of nice wildflowers, past a herd of sheep and one goat, up another hill and there was another one, another Megalith so we were told. This one not only was fallen on its side, it was broken in half. Nothing more to add here. That's what happens when they get old. If one is interested in Megaliths, go see Stonehenge. They are still erect and I’m sure nobody would argue that erect ones are more interesting. Meanwhile our hiking companions were slowwwwwww. Very slowwwww. Our hike turned out to be more of a stroll with stops every five feet to look at some flower or a snail or a weed. Whenever the guide made a point one person, usually the same person, had another question. I’m sure this woman was doing the same thing in 4^th grade, raising her hand to incessantly prolong whatever was being discussed. My ability to control my ADHD was being sorely tested. When we got to the end of the field, we turned around and walked back ending up at someone’s house and had this fresh bread warm out of the oven with fresh garlic and olive oil and also this aromatic herb cake (flour, honey, fennel, and herbs – fantastic), tea and some of us had a few sips of an ok red wine. Poor Fran. Forgot to mention, she’s gluten free. All she could eat was tea, if you call drinking tea eating. I’ve been gluten free but tasted the cake and then finished a piece and I feel guilty. She’s in good spirits though. She likes my company.

We met this interesting couple on the boat. They are about our age and they live in Maine. The normal, “what do you do” is replaced here by “what did you do” as the vast majority of travelers on this trip are retired. What they did seemed worth sharing. They each had 20 something year careers with the NSA. She is a registered nurse and what she did was to go to places and meet people and deal with their health issues, sometimes ordering secret evacuations. These folks couldn't go to doctors or hospitals. They weren't supposed to be there. I guess that makes her a spy. Her husband told me he worked on black box things. He’s an electrical engineer. He didn't elaborate. We also met another guy, an MD-PhD, trained at Hopkins. He’s an Emergency Medicine doctor, working in the ER 2 days a week and a researcher for the NIH, working in a lab 3 days a week. He’s been working on the same project with a team of five for ten years. They are using applied mathematics to dig deeper into MRI imaging data as there is a lot more information there that as yet is not usable. So our trip is not all widows, lonely divorcees, and ancient couples (not us) though the women way outnumber the men here. There are a lot of women traveling alone on this trip or with other women. No men are traveling alone or with another guy.

After a nice dinner sitting with three widows, we had a nice sleep on a calm sea, punctuated only by Fran’s coughing. The sun was rising as we pulled into the port of Cadiz. Our excursion this morning took us by bus into the center of the city and we began a walking tour. This group wasn’t quite as slow but we were antsy and soon bailed . We explored the little streets and alleys and stopped for a coffee at a combination book shop and coffee shop. My Sara would have really liked it. We also stopped at a Farmacia and I used my almost competent Spanish to get Fran some pastillas para las tos. I think they are working. We have no idea what's in them. We were trying to figure out what other European city Cadiz reminded us of. The small streets and low rise buildings sort of reminded us of Venice though Cadiz is clean and is not nearly as old or as charming and of course, it’s dry. Cadiz also has the highest unemployment rate of any major city in Spain; 40%. Tourism is helping and there were two large cruise ships that showed up after us. We’re now back at Orion, resting up a bit before heading back out this afternoon to explore more and find our own restaurant for dinner. I may have more pictures later. These pictures are all from yesterday.

---

Photos

Local Guide and Megalith
Really!

Grafitti
Can you read Portuguese?