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Published: August 20th 2006
Ola! Here's another blog from Portugal - the second of two beach holidays I've enjoyed this summer, this time in south-west Portugal for the Sudoeste Music Festival - a four day music extravaganza at night, party on the beaches all day. Sound good? Oh yeah, it was.
Day 1:
Sam, Kate, Mel, Robbie, Jules and I left London very early on Friday morning, and arrived in a steamy Lisbon around 9.30am bouncing with excitement despite barely any sleep and, after considerable delay due to a broken baggage carousel, we climbed into our silver bullet of a Mazda people mover, crammed to the hilt with travel packs and set off. Once out of Lisbon Portugal quickly became very rural and we soon found ourselves cruising past vineyards, cork trees stripped of bark (or, er, cork) and dusty red dirt populated with eucalypt trees - I was surprised to find the scenery reminding me quite a bit of home! As we departed the highway and hit the regional routes and grew closer to the coast, little villages sprang up with whitewalled houses, cobbled streets and shuttered windows and tiled decorations. While clearly not strangers to tourists, these little villages appeared to
retain their local authenticity. We wandered around during stops for petrol and iceblocks (it was really hot!) and felt very much like we were seeing "real" Portugal.
The drive seemed to take forever, but eventually we arrived in the little seaside town where the festival was located, and found Brad and Jane waiting for us in a sea of cars and bronzed, dusty visitors. Festivale de Sudoeste - now in its 10th year - has grown to a respectable size of 20,000 attendees, the majority of them campers like us - and the village had been inundated. I am sure they must hate it,but the amount of money pumped into their local economy would be enought to ensure they tolerate it. Brad and Jane, on the tail end of a 3-week tour of Spain and the Greek Islands, were so brown we almost didn't recognise them. And I couldn't wait to get my pasty butt on the beach either.
Finding the Festival grounds was no difficult task - we simply followed the trail of cars out of town and within a few minutes it lay spread out before us - the fesitval site, in which stood the stages,
a giant ferris wheel and assorted vendors, the parking lot - a sea of cars and dust, and beyond that, the beginnings of the campgrounds. We eventually found a carpark, unloaded our gear and set off on staking our claim to our camping territory. And it was precisely at this moment, reality struck. The dust! The rocky ground! And - oh, so gross - the portaloos for 20,000 people fermenting in 36 degree heat! Could I cope with this? I like to think of myself as pretty stoic in crap circumstances (and will those of you who think/know otherwise please stop laughing at that statement) but this was going to be a challenge. Within a very large, cordoned-off territory, the campers had pitched their tents wherever they could find a spot, including on a steep, rocky slope in amongst the gum trees, beside the showers, portaloos (eeeeewwww!!), mobile DJ caravans, absolutely anywhere. And we wandered for ages trying to find something. It didn't take long to become resigned to the fact we weren't going to find a spot where we could pitch eight tents together. That was going to be almost impossible. But the boys set off on a reconnaisance
mission and - to our sheer amazement - succeeded. The staff camping quarters were not well segregated from the main campgrounds, and were located on soft, grassy, flat land. Awesome!! They were also right beside the boundary fence of the festival site, and approximately 150m from the main stage. Less than awesome! But we claimed the land, pitched the tents, grabbed a beer and headed off for a swim at the nearby irrigation canal which was available as a recreation swimming spot for the festival goers. This was a real treat - clean, clear water to swim in whenever we needed freshening up.
After a quick swim and a yummy dinner of 'frango' (half a bbq chicken, basically, with rice and salad) we headed into the festival grounds, illuminated by the remains of a spectacular sunset and already pumping to the bands on the stages. That night, the headline acts were Goldfrapp and the Prodigy, whose shows were great fun. Prodigy was a bit nuts though, lots of young Portugese men jumping about like crazy. I didn't get any good photos of that concert. Fatigue soon set in and the crowds got a bit much. So we returned to
camp and fell fast asleep, not even the slightest bit disturbed by the sounds of festival goers partying all around me, well into the early hours of Saturday. It was a great start to the holiday.
Day 2:
We awoke shortly after sunrise because it didn't take long for the heat to turn our cosy little tents into polyester saunas. After a wake-up dip in the irrigation canal to wash off the dust and grime, we set off for the local beach back in town. Everyone else had pretty much the same idea - the town was buzzing with festival goers grabbing supplies for their campspots and the beach was already a mosaic of brightly coloured umbrellas and towels, glimpses of sandy spots and packed with bronzed bodies. It looked absolutely fantastic. We claimed our own little patch of territory and I promptly marched myself down to the deceptively tropical blue water, at which point pride forced me to ignore the instant pins and needles in my legs and plunge straight in to the icy Atlantic waters. Once I regained my breath, I decided I liked the frigid temperature more than the roasting sensation of my skin on
Me in a happy place
My tent's up, I'm in a bikini, have beer in hand, it's 36 degrees. Life is good :-)the beach, and remained in the surf. It felt so good to be diving under waves again! It has been a very long time since I've had the chance - all beach holidays since I had left Australia were to surf-free beaches. I insisted on staying at the beach while the others went for lunch back in the village and, after establishing a pleasant routine of swim - bake - swim again - bake again - I had (perhaps rather unsafely) just fallen asleep when they returned several hours later to collect me for return to the festival grounds. After another big dinner of 'frango' we headed into the festival site to check out the bands and get ready for the big performers of the night - Daft Punk. Check out the photos - they speak for themselves. I was on such a (genuinely, honestly natural and unassisted) high from that show, I farewelled the others who went off to bed then kicked on by myself well into Sunday morning. I just didn't want to stop but I did, at about 5am or something. There was light in the sky....
Day 3:
After a few hours sleep, I
Getting beer and frango
Our nightly pre-partying feed... crawled out of my nylon oven and dragged my woozy butt down the hill to the canal for a wake-up swim. All of us feeling a bit fatigued of the hot, dusty, smelly campgrounds and not wanting to have to step over bodies to get to the water again at the local beach, we decided to go on a day-trip south to the Algarve region of Portugal. Only an hour or so's drive, but sufficient distance from Sudoeste for us to feel like we were experiencing more of Portugal. Now, to say I was exhausted before I left London is quite an understatment. Only a couple of weeks into my new job at work, I had been pushing myself really hard and as such had felt like I was only just barely holding off sickness. The first couple of days of the holiday had left me feeling much refreshed and invigorated. Perhaps it was the partying all night, perhaps it was the hot temperatures contrasted with the icy water, but in any case I suddenly really began to feel unwell. I snoozed on the car trip, woken only for petrol and iceblock stops, until we reached Lagos. The region is
Sudoeste Festival line-up
A good mix of local and international big names famed for its beautiful coastline, with grottos and sandy beachs hidden in little coves. The view itself was enough to perk me right up. We found a beach and bought ourselves each a Li-Lo (a blow up pool bed). Thankfully, the water down south was considerably warmer, perhaps due to its proximity to the Mediterranean. Sam, Robbie, Mel and I set off on a little voyage, paddling our Lilo's like surfboards along the coastline, thrilling ourselves with adventures into little caves and through archways in the cliffs, disembarking on each little beach to walk past the bemused locals before paddling off again around the next little point, and so on we went. It was simply too much fun for words. Sam had a disposable camera he had attempted to waterproof by keeping in its clear plastic wrapper. We are hoping in vain the photographs we took will work out, but the torrent of water that poured out of the camera when Sam opened the wrapper later on suggests that they probably won't. Which is a shame, as it would be wonderful to have a photographic record of what I consider to be, on strength of that excursion alone and irrespective
of how wonderful the rest of the day was as well, one of the Top Ten best days ever.
After returning to our little beach, my shoulders aching pleasantly from the paddling, we headed into Lagos for a delicious lunch of fresh seafood and a wander around the village square before heading back to our little beach. I realised there wasn't much of a current or tide happening, so I simply swam back out on my LiLo, lay back and snoozed, floating listlessly in the sea, rocked gently to sleep by the waves of passing yachts. And in that spot I remained. Frankly though, I couldn't have cared less if I floated all the way to Tunisia. London was feeling a long way away, and it could stay there. I was in pure heaven.
None of us were in any hurry to get back to the festival - the bands that night weren't of particular interest and food-wise we were a bit 'frango'-ed out, but eventually it was time to go. And I had started to feel sicker than ever. That night at the festival, despite my best efforts at perking up the partygirl in me was struggling
My favourite photo
I am really proud of this photo - technically, it's probably not a good one but I just think it's really lovely. and I didn't last for the headline act that night, which is fine with me as Zero 7 make 'chill-out' (read: soporific) music, which was a perfect snoozetime soundtrack except I was so unwell I couldn't sleep. So I tossed and turned in frustration to the sounds of the final night of the festival until it was time to get up.
Day 4:
God, I felt awful that morning. Anticipating a mass exodus from the festival, we had intended an early start to the day and had parked close to the main road (ie; about a kilometre from the entrance to the campgrounds) which was a bloody long way to march with our loaded-up packs. And after packing up my wonderfully serviceable 7.99 quid tent from Argos and having a quick shower to feel vaguely human, I still felt like hell and couldn't wait to get out of there. Surprisingly (or perhaps not given how much noise and activity there had been all during the night) we were well ahead of the crowd and left the site with ease. It had been a blast, but I must admit I wasn't sorry to wave goodbye to the dusty, piss-odoured,
A beautiful sunset
I never went up in the ferris wheel to see the view and the sunset, and I really wish now that I did. litter-strewn grounds. I was ready for civilised existence again. The sun was beating down and so we decided to stop along the coast on the way back to Lisbon. We pulled into a lovely little village called Palma Cova, all paved streets and white buildings, blue trims and shuttered windows like the other villages we'd been to. I could go on about how beautiful the beach was but I'm sure that's getting tedious - and the pictures speak for themselves. I wasn't going to go for a swim, thinking myself remarkably mature and sensible for not exposing my miserably sick body to cold waters and hot sun again, but one toe in the water blew that out the window and I jumped straight into the sea with the others, and I actually felt fantastic for a while again. Naomi had brought a snorkel and so I went on a little exploration, surprised at all the tropical fish and how close I could get to them.
We stopped for lunch at a local restaurant, where I ordered calamari. And that's what I got - probably plucked from the local water, slapped on a bench to stun them and then thrown
straight on the grill. Because they were served up fully intact and the rather messy task of de-gutzing them was left to me. Perhaps the Portugese enjoy eating squid gutz but I found it a bit salty and gross so I cleaned them up, much to the disgust of my table companions.
Once in Lisbon, we returned the hire car (a 30 minute ordeal that Sam, Kate and I will fondly remember for Sam's hilariously unconfident attempts at driving on the right side of the road, in a manual vehicle - both apparently firsts for him). Most of the car's park brake went up in smoke as he'd left it on while burning up to the airport at 70km an hour in second gear. The frantic waving of a taxi driver next to us, motioning to the smoke coming from under the vehicle had us momentarily panicked but when we couldn't find flames we continued on our way and dropped off the car all smiles and thank you's. Heaven help the poor buggers who hired it after us.
And thus ended the holiday in Portugal. I had a wonderful time, and though I returned a snifflng, groggy and
exhausted mess it was absolutely worth it. And I got a fabulous tan too :-)
Next holiday is probably going to be a weekend in Geneva, Switzerland in a few weeks' time. I plan to go parasailing in the Swiss Alps - apparently you're tied tandem to a dude who just jumps off the face of the mountain and you go floating off over the valleys. Sounds terrifying, and wonderful - I can't wait!
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