Portugal Trip

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Ola a Sesmarais. Como esta? E gratis? Nao? Quanta? (Hello from Seamarais. How are you? Is it free? No? Then how much is it?) As you can see we’ve been doing a lot of shopping and we’re getting pretty good at asking the essential questions (unless you’re into pilfering fruit from an overhanging tree, nothing is free).
Sesmarais is the region that we are staying in and I’ve finally figured out how you would come to visit us. From the central bus station, or train station, tell your cab driver that you are going to Sesmarais however you don’t know where because none of the streets have names. Just tell him you want to go to the Dom Diniz Restaurant (it seems like everybody knows it). Turn right at the corner just before the Dom Diniz (at the boat shop with no name (naturally)) and follow the road (more like an alley) until you get down to the bottom. Turn left at the big green garbage can, bear right up the dirt alley toward Villa Beatriz and there we are on your left. Easy peazy!! Hope to see you soon.

Today we walked to the beach at Sao Rafael, about 20 minutes from our villa. This is another beautiful beach in the Algarve although it is a very rugged beach. The beach, itself, is quite long and very clean sand. However, the area around the beach is walled with high cliffs that have been pock marked and eaten away by millennia of ocean waves crashing into it. There are caves and arches carved into the cliffs and the waves come crashing through these with great force. This is not a particularly good beach to swim at when the breakers are rolling but it is a great placed for body surfers and strong swimmers. We found ourselves a spot on the beach and soaked up some rays and enjoyed the local scenery. Again, this was another hot day and we discovered that the cliffs are a favourite spot for egrets and other birds to sun themselves.

We returned home to the spaghetti and meat sauce dinner that the girls had been working on before we went to the beach. With fresh local vegetables and herbs, this turned out to be a wonderful dinner, in deed. They complemented the dinner with fresh baked buns from the near by mini merdcao (mini market). OH ... MY... God, it was good. If the owner of the Dom Diniz is smart, he’d beg the girls for the recipe. After diner we had the girl’s lemon pudding on the pool deck and before we knew it, it was 8:30. It turned out to be an early night.

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