The country of Ports

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We arrived in Lisbon, Portugal late at night, and promptly got lost, as is our usual way. Eventually, a taxi ride took us to the place that we needed to be, and we collapsed into bed. The next day, we hopped on a bus on our way north to a town called Peniche. The only other person on the bus who spoke English was a long haired Kiwi who told me, as I was loading my board, that he had heard from his mate that the surf was getting better that week. As we got off the bus, we struck up a proper conversation, and it turned out that he was meeting up with his mate, who was staying in the same hostel that we were. So after a bit of wandering, we found the place, and eventually met up with his mate, Nate, and his surfing girlfriend Dana, from california. This trio of Paul, Nate and Dana was to become my surfing buddies for the next week or so, and both of our drinking buddies.

Life soon settled into a pleasant routine of getting up for a late breakfast (the hostel kitchen didn't open until 9 or 9.30), walking to the beach, and surfing for a few hours - or lying and reading a book. Then we would come home, walk to the shops and try and russle up some stuff for dinner, have a big cook up, a couple of beers, and then watch some American TV thanks to the 1000 chanels that they had on the big screen in the loungeroom.

One night we knew that there was not going to be any surf the next day, so the kiwi boys decided to get pissed. My rubber arm was easily twisted, and Caroline figured, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Paul was loudly telling everyone in the hostel that we were having a party, and that they had to drink with us. As most of the rest of the hostel were relatively sedate Europeans, some in couples, they pretty much all decided to go out for a late dinner that night. We started off playing drinking games while drinking beer, and soon moved on to whiskey shots and dry martinis. At about this point, a few of the people started returning from their dinners, and most of them fled to the safety of their rooms. One girl, however, was talked into joining the madness. It's not surprising that she was from Perth. Her name was Marta, and she was to become Caroline's partner in crime for the next few days. A few quick martinis and she was welcomed to the fray.

We got kicked out of the hostel about midnight, and told to go to the bar... which we did. It wasn't very busy, so we proceeded to dominate. One of the kiwis told the bartender that he wanted to show him a new type of cocktail shot, but only if he could make it himself. The bartender agreed, but only if he made some for his mates. So we proceeded to get free shots all night. When the bar ended, we headed back to the hostel for a good old fashioned guitar and singalong/rap at 5am... we were not the most popular with the rest of the hostel the next day. But we spent most of the day in bed anyway.

Peniche was very much a fishing town. Walking to the shops or the beach you had to pass the fish factory... very fishy. Basically all the restaurants served fish 10 ways, and then beef or chicken. The town had a fort, which had served as a defense against pirates for hundreds of years. Walking around the cliffs, you could just imagine pirates hiding out in the caves and the nooks and crannies. Occasionally, hardcore fogs would roll through, and by the water you could barely see 10 meters in front of you.

Eventually, fate drove us out of the Peniche hostel. The Kiwi guys left to continue their travels, Dana the californian left to go north, Marta went south to the infamous rising cock hostel, and the peniche hostel was fully booked out by a group coming in for a birthday.

The day before we had to leave the hostel, some more kiwis turned up, Brendan and Magdalena, who were also there for surfing (well, he was). They had a car, so I quickly made friends with them. We got booted out to some sub standard accommodation the hostel had arranged for us nearby, and they stayed a little while away. I forgot to get their contact details, but ran into them while crossing the road... or to be more precise, they almost ran me over while I was walking to the surf. So I arranged an early morning surf the next day.

It was lucky I did, in more ways than one. The place we were staying must have had bad plumbing or something, because the place STANK LIKE A FAARKING SEWER. It smelt a little when we first got in, but we opened the windows and it went away. That night it was not too bad. When I got up at 6.00, it was starting to get worse. By the time I got back from the surf, Caroline had been woken up by the smell, and spent all morning out of the room. Brendan told us that his accommodation was crap as well (pardon the pun) so we decided to rent an apartment for the rest of the week. We held our breaths long enough to get all our stuff out of the room, not bothering to tell the old portugese owner that we were not going to stay there anymore (well, she was pretty much deaf, and only spoke portugese anyway, and we worked it out with the hostel). On the way down the stairs, we passed a young guy with a wetsuit on his shoulder, Mike, and he asked where we had surfed. So we started chatting, and his room stank as well, so we invited him to come and join us in the new apartment that we had rented. I also offered to sell him a surfboard for €20, which he was stoked at.

Oh yeah, the surfboards. That morning, when I went surfing with brendan, he was on a booger. He surfed at home, but the board rental price was too much ($60 aussie a day) so he hired a booger for about 1/10th of that - of course, nobody will ride the stupid things 😉. We were driving around, and the only people we saw at any place we checked was this car full of guys... all aussies (of course). Two of them were leaving the next day, and offered to sell us their surfboards for €20 each, which is what they had paid for them a few weeks earlier. They were not in the best condition, and they were not really suited to Brendan's size (Brendan is 6'7 and 125 kg, and these boards were suited for my size), but it was better than a booger, and I said I WOULD BUY ONE, because I can't turn down a bargain, and too many surfboards are never enough. So when I ran into Mike, who didn't have a surfboard, and was about to buy one for a couple of hundred euro, I gave it to him for what I paid.

The apartment was cool, a couple of double rooms, a kitchen, and Mike slept in the living room. So we went from living with 2 kiwis and a californian, to living with 2 different kiwis and a different californian. The boys would surf all day, the girls would sit around and chat or go for a walk, then we would all come home, watch a movie, cook some food and drink some wine. At about this time the aussie (and kiwi) dollar was going to shit, so we were in low spending mode. But booze was so cheap! $5 aussie for a surprisingly drinkable bottle of wine, and about $3.50 for a 6 pack of beer. So we could afford some luxury...

Mike is a very enthusiastic young seppo, who works as a bootcamp instructor and a kids' karate teacher in Hollywood. Of course, he moved there to become an actor. He was really keen on having people to surf with, and getting a board, and portugal, and a new place to stay... everything really. A good foil to my sometimes dark cynicism. But a few good days surfing were about to change that...

The first day we surfed with Mike, we went to a place that me and Brendan had checked the day before. This was midday on a sunday, it was offshore, about 4 foot of swell. We turned up at this cliff, and saw these right handers peeling off... and there was no one out! Mike had his video camera, Brendan had his underwater camera, but there was no way that we were going to film someone else... it was time to surf. Brendan struggled, given that he was riding a board made for someone literally 50kg lighter and 20cm shorter than him, and eventually the board gave out as he put his back foot right through it. So he swam in and grabbed his waterproof camera to take some footage, and we started swapping boards. The resulting footage is the first video posted here in the blog (to music, so you might like to switch on your speakers).

I had an absolute ball, we surfed for about 4 hours, and only once did one guy paddle out. We just sat there swapping waves for ages, and when we came in we could all hardly paddle. When we got home, the girls asked what was going on, because I was deliriously exhausted, babbling stupidly, and had a grin ear to ear. The cheap beers went down smooth that night.

The next day, we went back to the same place, similar swell, same tide... and it was crap. So we decided to pick up the girls, and go to a long beach a few kms north of the town. We got there, and it looked alright, so we suited up and paddled out. We only had 2 boards, so we were doing the swap thing again, and one guy was filming from the beach. And damn it if the waves weren't even better than the day before. 200m left handers, peeling off, 2 guys out who promptly paddled in, and heaps of sets. The waves were so easy to surf, just super fun (super is a seppo word that we learnt). For another 4 hours I got every wave I wanted, shared out even more, surfed my ass off, and did a bit of filming. At one point, I ran up the beach yelling "This much fun should be illegal", before skulling some water, scoffing an apple, kissing Caroline and heading back out. The resulting footage of me is the second video, and probably my funnest day of surfing in years.

The next day the swell dropped off, and we didn't surf, which was good because I couldn't lift my arms.

When our week at the apartment was up, Brendan and Magdalena (Maz) had to leave to go to Thailand (where they would later get engaged - congratulations guys!) and Mike was heading north to Porto, so we decided to hop in his car with him. Porto is a port city... funny that. It is also the home of the fortified wine, Port. Who would have thought? It's also a uni city, so there are lots of young people hanging around. The uni students wear this black robe thingy when they get past first year, so you have all these young people walking around the town looking like extras from Eyes Wide Shut, or extras from a Monty Python sketch about Masons. We had a wander around the town for a few days, sampling the local delicacies ie port, visting a really cool cartoon art gallery, and seeing random portugese metal bands playing for free outdoors and saluting the crowd in three languages.

After Porto, Mike and us drove to Figuera da Foz, because Dana the other californian had been emailing us saying how good the surf was, so we had to check it out. We stayed at a cool hostel called the paintshop, which was run by a young british couple, so the hostel and attached bar became a centre for the english expat crowd in figuera. And there was quite a few of them, from friends of the british couple to a whole group of cabaret performers living in the town on contract with the local casino. So we hung out a bit with a dancer and the singer, after watching one of their performances. They live nocturnal lives, with performances at 11.30pm at night, they generally wake at midday or later, go to rehearsals, perform, go out, and go to sleep at 5am. The main singer/dancer told us some interesting stories about performing in some Bollywood movies in India - while Bollywood itself was fun and glamorous, the locals treated the dancers like they were prostitutes and in one town they were forced to leave... so her perception of India was not too positive. There was also a pretty interesting crew of travellers passing through the paintshop. Mostly surfers, from academics in quantum physics and marketing, musicians, through to a little baby of a wandering traveller (baby is half African), who had since met an Aussie guy who knew people we know in Perth. And a crazy german girl who offered to film us surfing, and then instead focused on filming birds and clouds, and rock pools, and empty sky, all of the while chatting, knowing the camera was on. She got one wave in 90 minutes of footage, and then asked for a copy for herself. Guess she wasn't so in to watching us surfing ??

We also had possibly the richest meal of our whole trip, a 'Francissina'. We had seen all the students in Porto eating them, and they told us it was a local favourite, and that we had to try one. Imagine a sandwich... filled with ham, bacon, pork sausage, and pork fillet, then toasted with cheese on top, then put in a bowl, surrounded by hot chips and covered with gravy. Mmmmmm heart attack. One of those bad boys did me for lunch and dinner.

The days passed in Figuera, surfing, hanging out. It was starting to get colder, and more like winter, and not beach weather at all (unless you were surfing with a wetsuit) - the water in Portugal is COLD. And so, after spending 163 days together non stop (almost 4000 hours maths nerds) Caroline went on to Lisbon while I decided to stay on and spend a few extra days chasing a swell that was about to hit. I surfed, it was getting really cold, and then met up with Caroline in Lisbon.

Over to Caroline...

So I arrived in Lisbon, 3 train rides later even though it wasn't that far away, and made my way to the Oasis hostel, which is a converted mansion and one of the best hostels we stayed in on our trip and near the Bairro Alto area, with loads of bars, restaurants and funky shops.

It didn't take me long to meet two girls from country Victoria, Tanya and Jessica, and they became my buddies for the week in Lisbon. They had been travelling for 6 months, much like me.

There was also another guy and girl from Melbourne working at the hostel. The guy had just canoed down the river from Spain to Portugal and then fell in love with an eastern European girl in Lisbon and ended up staying in the city for a summer of love. But the girl had since left to move to Liverpool, and he had just visited her and didn't like the town, "I would have moved to Liverpool if she asked me, but she didn't, and I'm kind of glad now." The other girl from Melbourne had lived in Brazil for a year, and has been in Portugal for several months. She was our tour guide and really loved the laid back, understated and friendly city.

First full day, I was booked in to do a walking tour for the late afternoon, and decided first to head out on my own and wander the city to get a feel for it. When a photographer stopped me and asked me to be part of his postmodern photography project, taking photos at tourist locations (I had already realised I looked like a tourist, as I was the only person wearing shorts). And he would send me the cd of the photos, which was great because our camera was broken. The tour was interesting, the photographer talked a lot about the history of Lisbon and Portugal's empire, including colonies in Africa. He considered Lisbon (and Portugal) to have feminine qualities, compared to Madrid's (and Spain's) masculinity, because although it had been one of the largest empires in the world, it wasn't ostentatious or showy - no big grand buildings. And a lot of the rich people's houses had gardens surrounded by walls, so you couldn't see anything, and wouldn't even know rich people lived there. When I got back to the hostel and told them about the photo shoot, it happened that some of the people who worked there had also had their photos taken. And true to his word, I received a cd of photos, posted to mum and dad's in Perth.

Following walking tour number one, I went on the hostel's walking tour, just 30 minutes later, led by the girl from Melbourne. Similar overview of Lisbon, similar sites, similar comments about how Lisbon is laid back and unassuming, but we also ate and drank our way through the tour, trying the sweet cherry liqueur and amazing custard tarts. And we went further, into some interesting neighbourhoods. Lisbon is the city of (seven?) hills so it's great (or hard going) for your legs! Not to mention some gorgeous horizon views.

It was Tanya's birthday, so after this, Jess, Tanya and I went out for dinner. They tried traditional Portugese chicken, which I passed on, as I had already tried it in Porto and realised it is just chicken with the option of chilli on the side, and not even as good as Nandos. Then we returned to the hostel's garden bar and received several free birthday drinks, finished a bottle of vodka, and the birthday girl passed out before we were even ready to go out. We put her to bed, and then Jess and I headed out on the town, along with a group of people from the hostel, led by the guy that worked there. In the artsy central area where we were staying, Bairro Alto, there are small cobble-stone streets with many bars, and the crowds of people spill out of the bars and into the street with their drinks. Clearly, no street drinking restrictions here. It was a fun night out, going bar hopping before walking home. Portugese generally don't get drunk, but rather have a few and keep things reasonably coherent.

Without going too much into a day by day account, here are some of the highlights of Lisbon and surrounds:

- Fado singing. This is a Portugese tradition. Usually women, but men sing too nowadays, sing songs about missing their beloved who is out at sea. We went to a couple of these, which took place in small, dimly lit, crowded bars. The singer and about three musicians take up a tiny space in one corner and perform while everyone in the bar listens silently. The singer doesn't use a microphone, yet belts out a soulful performance, which even if you don't understand Portugese, can still be very moving.

- Evora's chapel of bones. It gives me chills thinking about it now. It is a small chapel made entirely of human bones. It is next door to a cathedral in the walled, cobbled stone town of Evora, near Lisbon. The chapel was built in the 16th or 17th century, with bones from the monastic cemeteries in the area that were taking up too much space (due to a plague perhaps). There is an inscription on the entrance that reads "We bones that are here are waiting for yours" and inside there are 5000 monks' skeletons making up the walls and pillars - arm and leg bones, skulls, etc, and two complete skeletons of an adult and child, hanging from the wall. Also inside are several poems on death and mortality.

- Sintra. A fairy tale royal town which is ultra lush and green, Steve and I spent a few hours roaming around Quinta da Regaleira, in Sintra, a world trip highlight and impossible to put into words. If you are going to Portugal, take some time to go here!! It was created in the early 1900s and is a palace, a chapel and massive parkland that is someone's incredible imagination and mythical, supernatural ideologies developed into architectural landscaping. A labyrinth of tunnels, lakes, spiraling stairs, balconies, going up a hill, and an initiation well (possibly inspired by the Knights of the Temple or master Masons). The palace was unusual too. On the second floor, there was a library room with 6 walls: 4 walls with floor to ceiling books, and two walls with doorways, and there was about 10cm column of mirror bordering the room along the edges of the floor which made it feel like the room was floating.

- The many hills and views. You could walk for hours!

Our last night in Lisbon, we all went out as a group again, enjoying music from a Brazilian band (the singer was the Melbourne girl's boyfriend), and then it was time to say goodbye to the country of Ports. Btw, we were in Portugal for all of October. Sorry for not posting this until January!!

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