The Portugal Diaries: Back in Lagos

Tonel Beach, Sagres

Lagos, Portugal – We’re back to where it all started. Mike and I arrived in Lagos last night after a couple of chilled out days in Sagres, about 30 minutes to the west.

We’d spent our days dodging the stink eye stares from the local contingent of bodyboarders at Tonel Beach, paying too much for food at the overpriced grocery store and dodging tumbleweeds on the main street.

It may sound like I was less than impressed with the town, but I only have to think of London to realise it was actually paradise. Just slightly less of a paradise than the rest of The Algarve, which has been an absolute blast to explore.

We’re spending our last two days in Portugal here in Lagos up on the second floor of an apartment block just outside the Old Town walls, where Angela runs a guesthouse. Angela is from New Caledonia and doesn’t speak a word of English. I don’t speak any French. But somehow I know that she is 66, walks every day, buys eggs from a neighbour up the road, eats fish and legumes and worries about her 68 year old husband who has a bad heart and so is now only allowed to drink non-alcoholic beer.

I learnt most of this through sign language and deciphering her French while she cooked me breakfast in the little kitchen in her flat. I sat at a small table sweating off a bad hangover while the ferocious mid-morning sun poured in through the east-facing window. I actually excused myself at one point to retrieve my sunglasses.

I think that’s a first for me: eating an omelet while wearing aviator shades indoors. Shit I’m cool.

Lagos back street

Mike did the sensible thing and stayed in bed with the comforter over his head until midday and then had Angela cook him an omelet sandwich to go. No eating in the hothouse for him.

Afterwards we somehow we tramped down the two flights of stairs with all our boards to the Peugeot and loaded up for the days surfing. Due to the mid afternoon high tides and Punta Ruiva beach being best when there’s lots of water on the sandbank, there’s not been any rush to get to the surf.

It’s just about the most relaxing surfing trip I’ve been on: drink cheap booze until the early hours in some bar, sleep until mid morning, make lunch for the day and mozy on down to the beach for a mid-afternoon surf.

The only thing left to do now is pack up our stuff ahead of the drive back to Faro for our flights to London early tomorrow. I’m sad to leave, but at the same time Mike and I are anxious to get the Peugout back to its owners while we still can.

We’ve spent a week careening down bush tracks that I’ve only seen four wheel drives tackle and there’s not much more under-carriage we can afford to lose. After tearing off the stone tray and trailing a long sheet of insulation, the next thing to go will probably be the sump or the transmission.

For more images, check out the Portugal album on Flickr here.

The Portugal Diaries: The Wild West

Watching the sun set from Cape St Vincent is the best show
in town

Sagres, Portugal – Back when they thought the earth was flat, this place was referred to as the edge of the world.

The sleepy, fishing town of Sagres is out on the most south westerly tip of Europe. It’s the last sight of land explorers would have seen before they sailed over the horizon, either to drop off the edge of the world, or as it turned out, discover South America and India.

Today, Sagres still feels like its on the edge of the world. It’s got a slight wild west vibe going on. There’s one or two long, wide streets to the town. At midday hardly anyone or anything stirs. When Mick and I went looking for dinner on our first night in town I half expected to see tumbleweeds rolling past the couple of empty bars we found.

The bars were the generic type of surfer bars that are probably a lot of fun in high season with a bunch of people about. But now in October, Sagres, like most of the Algarve, has been quite empty. I suspected that the bar we ate in attracted its few customers more for the free wireless than anything else. Couples huddled around the blue glow of their laptops, whispering to each other.

Mick and I tried to create a convivial atmosphere up at the bar with our big mugs of Super Bock. But after a while the tapping of keys and clicking of mice got too much and we got the hell out of there.

Ceramics shop, Sagres

Mind you, the atmosphere was probably a thousand times better than the restaurant we ended up in last night. Determined to get away from the pizza n pasta fare of the surfer bars, we tried a quaint Portuguese place further down the road towards the big fishing harbour. Fishing nets and model sail boats adorned the walls. A good start I thought. Anywhere this old school has got to be good.

However, I soon realised the few customers already seated were actually the family that ran the place. After the stern-faced waitress took our orders and Mick and I began the 45 minute wait for our food, they clicked on the television above our heads and gathered round a couple of tables to watch Portuguese soaps.

Mick and I tried to ignore it but it was tough competing against the rapid-fire Portuguese being broadcast from a metre above our table. So instead we got down to the serious business of attacking the cheap bottle of red we’d ordered, pouring it on top of the three bottles of 5.6% Super Bock beer already in our belly from our beers-on-the-balcony session earlier.

By the time the food arrived we were having a blast and never wanted to leave.

The Portugal Diaries: Surfin’ Euro.S.A

Arrifana, Portugal – Surfing in Europe is such a different beast to anything I experienced back in Australia.

For starters, the people in the line up are just as likely to be from some weird non-surfing country like Sweden, Austria or Germany. Sitting out the back waiting for the sets is a multicultural experience, with rapid-fire Portuguese chatter, German, loud Australian and English geezer accents all in the air.

The variety of surf craft is quite encouraging to see. Quad fin fish style boards seemed to be quite popular. As were mini mals and fun boards. The few Australians I surfed with seemed to be clinging to their 6′2 shortboards but everyone else was getting into the experimental vibe. On some days out in the surf it felt like we were all back in the early 70s.

The choice of surfboard construction was interesting too. Jez, one of the surf guides, swore by his pale blue Bufo boards made in Germany. I rode his 5′7 fish for a session and really dug the lightness and flexibility of it. I’ve also seen boards made out of epoxy, balsa and a couple of those Firewire boards that Taj Burrow rides.

But perhaps the biggest difference is the vibe in the line up. It feels a lot more positive and carefree than any surf in Australia, where most people have been surfing for years and are used to competing for their waves. Here in south west Portugal its as if my fellow (non-Portuguese) surfers are travelers who are surfing, rather than surfers intent on getting as many waves as they can.

Lemmings to slaughter
The one down side is that somewhere, somehow, all these Euro surfers have learnt how to paddle out, duckdive and catch waves. It’s just the actual standing up and surfing part that still needs a bit of work.

Which is when you get situation like the other day. Mike and I were out at the Portuguese Lennox Head. It was four to five feet, so not exactly small. For each set wave a couple of surfers would turn and paddle into the beautiful walls. They’d get to their feet and then choose one of a variety of ways to fall off: some would go head first, others stood up too soon and went over with the lip, some chose to try and run over friends before falling off at the base of the wave. It was like watching Lemmings or something.

It would have been hilarious, if I wasn’t mourning for all the beautiful waves that were going to waste.

The Portugal Diaries: Big surf

Somewhere near Monte Clerigo

Arrifana, Portugal – The surf was big this morning. Maybe six feet on the sets and not a breath of wind.

We’d been tracking the swell for a couple of days via MagicSeaweed.com so we were up at the crack of dawn, which is about 7.15am at this time of year, ready to hit it. The Portuguese surfers don’t tend to show until late morning so we went roaring away from our base at the Arrifana hostel intent on getting some waves to ourselves.

The only problem was the big, open west coast beaches were attracting a lot of swell. There was some real gems of waves to be surfed, but in between them relentless sets poured in and shut down the whole bay. We sat on at least half a dozen different cliff tops, wondering if the waves we found were surfable. And what would happen if we got caught out by a monster set.

Given our current fitness levels from the London summer, “probably drown” was Mick’s answer.

We checked different beaches all the way down to Amato, about half an hour down the coast. It was no good down there. Instead, we ended up back at Arrifana at midday, where it was small, clean and fun.

We’d gone from staring at six foot death waves at dawn to surfing without leg ropes in the warm sun in six hours.

Surfing in Portugal is a strange thing sometimes.

The Portugal Diaries: Easy Driver

Mick, driving to the beat of his own drum

Arrifana, Portugal – My friend Mick is the designated driver for this surf trip. I didn’t get around to organising a UK drivers license in time so he’s behind the wheel. I can’t even do my bit by being navigator because we’re using Mick’s mobile phone as a GPS.

Mick’s driving can best be described as unorthodox. It’s not for him to conform to the rigid techniques of driving like the rest of us do. If he wants to cruise down the highway in third gear, he will. If he wants to accelerate out of a corner in fifth, he’ll do that too. In fact, gear changing is strictly an optional extra with Mick.

He also has an amazingly thick skin – he feels no pressure from cars behind him to drive in a certain way. If he arrives at junction and is not sure which way to turn, he has no problem stopping for a couple of minutes to consult his GPS. The tailback behind us can be damned.

Perhaps Mick’s most noticeable trait is that when confronted with something unusual on the road, for example a cyclist or tight corner or pedestrian looking like they might at one stage think about crossing the road, his first reaction is to give the brakes a quick stab. Once he’s sussed that there’s no danger he usually gets back on the gas and off we go. Safety first, says Mick.

A couple of days ago we were cruising down the familiar dirt track to surf Punta Ruiva when out of the blue three enormous dogs came tearing out of the undergrowth on my side of the car. Fangs bared, saliva flying, barking like it was the end of the world. Although we were going at a fair speed, they actually caught up to us pretty quickly. Scared the hell out of us.

“Keep going Mick,” I said, startled. But true to form, Mick instead stabbed the brakes. All three dogs quickly came up to my window.
“Keep going!” I shouted, by now terrified they would jump through the window and tear my face off. Mick stabbed the brakes again, later claiming he didn´t want to run the dogs over. Fuck the dogs, what about my face?
“Mick, keep fucking going!”
Finally he got back on the accelerator and we slowly pulled past the dogs.

I say slowly because he was accelerating in fifth gear.

The Portugal Diaries: Deflated in Arrifana

Pit stop on a dirt track somewhere south of Arrifana

Arrifana, Portugal – Team Peugeot is in Arrifana at the moment, about 45 minutes up the north coast from Lagos.

It’s a long beach surrounded on three sides by tall cliffs. White washed villas line the single, steep switch back road that threads its way down the cliffs to sea level.

Arrifana reef on the northern side is a rock-lined wave that I’m told on its day is one of the best in Portugal. Today the swell is not quite big enough to clear the two or three big rocks in the middle of the lineup. Instead Mick and I take to the dirt tracks to the south, searching for a right hander we’d heard about.

Unfortunately, on our way out there we were forced off the road by a rampaging Land Cruiser coming the opposite way. A stick punctured the side wall of the Pug’s right front tyre and it was flat in seconds. After a sweaty hour in the sun figuring out how to get the space saver spare tyre out of the car, we had it fitted and were back on track, gingerly navigating our way deeper into the bush and praying the skinny replacement tyre would hold up.

Four to five feet, breaking for 150 metres and only a handful
of people out.

We came over a hill and were greeted by the sight of two different right handers wrapping into the bay. One heaved and rolled down the edge of a steep cliff. Not quite surfable and we weren’t even sure how to get out there.

The other was the real gem. A big wall, maybe four or five foot, swung in from the north west and rolled down a boulder-lined point. It looked a little like Lennox Head or Scotts Head in New South Wales.

We didn’t even know what it was called. But we were straight out there.

The Portugal Diaries: Out of the nest

Although it looks like we’re going fast, there’s probably 20
Portuguese behind us waiting to overtake on a blind corner

Lagos, Portugal – Today I left the safe nest of the surf camp and went it alone with my friend Mick, who flew in last night from London.

We’ve rented a Peugot diesel wagon for the week and have a rough plan to work our way up the west coast of the Algarve looking for surf.

Our first challenge, however, was surviving the gauntlet of the Portuguese roads and the road warriors who drive on them. In just the first 20 minutes we’d been beeped at and abused by two different drivers. I’ve no idea what they said but Portuguese seems like an awesome language for swearing in. So rapid and guttural.

Six foot and offshore but basically unsurfable on our puny
6′2 surfboards

Searching for surf
The swell jumped overnight from a playful three foot to more than six foot, accompanied by roaring offshore winds. Our go-to beach for the past week was enormous. Huge rights broke across the bay while in the corner a few guys on seven foot-plus boards rode big lefts. Technically it was surfable but it would have been a lot of hard work.

Instead we headed towards the sheltered south coast where we’d heard there was a few fun waves in and around the resort towns of Luz and Salema. Luz is better known as the town where the British toddler Maddie McCan disappeared in 2007.

Today it was almost deserted. Rows and rows of identical faux-Portugese villas lined the streets. It’s off season now and most had their shutters down. I presumed their British owners were back in the UK somewhere. Vende se (for sale) signs were posted on almost half the properties. The whole place had a slightly sinister Cocaine Nights feel to it.

But around the Luz village square life seemed to go on just as it always had. Portuguese men sat on a bench and chewed the fat. Women bought groceries for dinner and lugged the heavy bags down cobble stone streets to their white wash-walled homes.

And the surf? After a dozen wrong turns we eventually found a wave at the base of steep cliffs. It seemed to break off an underwater rock ledge and as the tide filled in it got bigger and better. Mick and I ended up surfing three foot A-frames to ourselves for a couple of hours. Those British villa owners don´t know what they missed!

The Portugal Diaries: Lazy in Lagos

The author and his new best friend, whose name he has temporarily forgotten

Lagos, Portugal – By day the historic port town of Lagos belongs to the few northern European tourists that have dared to venture to The Algarve region outside of the July-August crazy high season.

With its cobbled streets, cheap al fresco dining and hidden beach accessed by an arch cut into the tall cliffs it’s a beautiful town.

It’s at night that the balance of power changes. The families have their early dinners at the restaurants along the main street and then retire for the night. It’s then that the town is given over to roving gangs of backpackers and surfers.

I should know. I’ve been one of them everyh night of the week. A quick dinner with 20 of my new best closest friends from the surf camp and then out into the night to drink cheap bottles of Sagres beer.

DCs, Eddies, Three Monkeys, Red Eye. They’re all the same. All offering €2 bottles of beer and the same mix tape of Wolfmother, The Strokes or Kings of Leon. Drink at enough bars for long enough and you can hear Wolfmother’s White Unicorn four times in one night.

The Australians seem to be the dominant nationality in town at the moment. It’s the Aussies that serve you the drinks behind the bars. Shout “howyagoin boys, avinagoodnight?” outside the doors, trying to tempt passers by into their den of iniquities. God knows what sort of arrangements they have with their employers. 90 day tourist visas and cash in hand most likely.

By midnight I don’t care. I’ve been surfing all day, been blasted by the sun and poured too many beers down my throat. I’m part of the mob, creating a party at each bar we go to, whether it is empty or crowded. “Ola,” we shout on our arrival, “half a dozen Sagres thanks! And can’t you play some different music? I’ve heard this three times already, fer chrissakes.”

The Portugal Diaries: First surf

Punta, a guaranteed A-frame on high tide every time

Lagos, Portugal – If The Algarve reminds me of Lancelin in Western Australia then its beaches are a lot like the Margaret River region of south west WA.

Think tall cliffs and hills covered in dry scrub. Dusty dirt tracks winding their way to hidden cresent shaped beaches. And pounding surf.

The days here follow a steady rhythm. By mid morning the surf house occupants have risen, been fed and packed the three Land Rovers full of surfboards, eskies and backpacks. It’s an odd mix of first time surfers from Europe as well as Brits who get the occasional surf back home in England or Guernsey.

From Lagos on the south coast we drive out to the west coast for 30 minutes and then take a seemingly random gravel track out into the countryside. Finally we take a turn down hill and the big blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean fills the windscreen. Our destination for the first few days is a long sandy beach ringed by scrub-covered cliffs on three sides. Granite rocks spill from the headlands on either side.

In the middle an A-frame peak angles onto the sandbank and breaks almost all the way into shore. I can’t wait to get out there.

The scene on the beach really is comical. There’s three other surf schools already there. Each with a tent or flags set up to mark their patch. Maybe two or three dozen beginners practising how to stand up on their boards on the shore. We join, pitching a tent for shade and dropping eskies and flags and rash vests onto the sand.

Unsteady beginnings
Despite the crowd on the beach, once I make it out the back it’s surprisingly empty. Just a handful of locals and a couple of us from the surf house.

I soon realise that not surfing for 12 months isn’t the best preparation for a two week surf trip. The muscles in my shoulders and arms have atrophied so much that just paddling out through the three foot shorebreak leaves me exhausted. My lower back is tweaked from having to pull my chest up to paddle properly.

After a while I just paddle around with my chin on the deck of my board, like a beginner, too tired to keep my head up. I´m actually kinda scared how out of shape I am for surfing.

My first few waves are fairly spastic affairs. All jerky movements and badly timed turns. The surf guides must be scratching their heads, I think, after I had told them I had surfed for 18 years.

Coming together
Finally I sort my shit out. I stop doing turns and just concentrate on gliding down the waves. I´m surfing a 6´2 high performance shortboard like an old single fin. Rising and falling down the face. I´m starting to remember how to surf again.

Thank god for that.

The Portugal Diaries: Into the sun

Lagos back street

Lagos, Portugal – The Algarve region on Portugal’s south coast reminds me a little of the stretch of road between Perth and Lancelin back home in Western Australia.

The same dusty hills dotted with more rocks than trees. The bright, almost white hot sky with not a cloud in sight. The warm dry breeze.

But it’s also typically Portugese. Low, squat houses with thick white-washed walls. Red terracotta roof tiles and faded sea green shutters. The smell of seafood being grilled in the evening accompanied by the chatter of rapid-fire Portugese.

I’m based out of the old port town of Lagos for a week. Escaped from the shortening days and plunging temperatures in London to reacquaint myself with the beach and surfing again. It’s been 12 months since I last caught a wave. That time it was in San Sebastian in Spain and it didn’t get above two foot. This trip I’ve got plenty of time and hopefully there’ll be plenty of swell.

Taking a walk
The surf house I’m staying at runs a fleet of Land Rovers to the surf every morning. By arriving at midday I’ve missed the only departure so I grab a towel and my sunnies and head off into the town intent on getting something to eat and having a swim.

Lagos brings to mind some of the other picturesque towns I’ve visited like Luang Prabang or San Sebastian or Hoi An. Big enough to have a great range of food joints and bars. Old enough to have some historic buildings and ruins to check out. Small enough that you can get about on foot, navigating through the narrow marble-cobblestone alleyways and through the jacaranda-shaded squares.

At the town beach I duck through a tunnel cut into the cliff and emerge into a little crescent shape of sand. A couple of groups of loud Australians are drinking Sagres in the sun. A couple of Portuguese play keep it up with a football in the shorebreak.

What a great little town this is, I think as I wade into the water. It´s going to be a good week.