New Years in Portugal

Sunday morning dawned and we drove towards the airport just as the ice was beginning to harden on the car window - good timing since we haven’t yet bought a scraper. At 6.00 in the morning it is hard to believe how many bleary eyed Britons were escaping the English winter – the queue to the check in wound it's way like a snake right around the airport. There were flights to all the ‘cheap’ destinations we had seen on our search for a cheap holiday on the internet - Glenoble, Innsbruck, Krakow, Dublin, Glasgow, Nice and Faro. A winter holiday or a summer one - summer of course and some warmth please.
Armacao de Pera is a little town in the Algarve region about 40 kms from Faro airport. The Lonely Planet describes the Algarve area as Portugal’s major tourist resort area since Faro airport opened in the 1960’s, leading to a flood of package tours from Britain and increasingly, Germany and France. The big attraction? Almost year-round sun, great beaches and low prices. Those are still the Algarve’s major selling points, though rampant development during the late 1970’s between Lagos and Faro destroyed much of the coastline’s picturesque quality’. And it is true.

The weather was still and warm (about 20 and above), our hotel was one of many along the beach (a bit like Australia's Gold Coast - but some how the impression is one of little planning and haste!!). The town is full of smallish apartment blocks, with only a church and one small fort providing any hint of what the history of the town had. The area only has about 250 years of history in its towns because most of the area was destroyed by an earthquake in 1755 and a rather large tsunami. The souvenir shops come complete with clothes, scarves and ornaments made in China and very few local traditionally made goods - though the ceramics we did find were very good quality, highly colourful and quite unique. We are getting a collection of Collins Phrasebooks but hardly opened our Portugese book as most menus are in Portuguese and English with some in German and French. There are hamburger cafes, places to buy coffees and cakes and a few ethnic restaurants serving American food, pizza and pasta, Chinese, Indian and just a couple of Portuguese restaurants serving fresh fish and nice local wine. The beaches and the natural coastline are superb. We wandered along the cliff line which over time has become a bit like Punakaiki and a bit like the Pinnacles and Castle Point. Fossils galore and cactuses and the last of the flowers hyacinths, hydrangeas, ginger, red hot pokers, bougainvilla. Spring and summer must be a real picture. Great views and opportunities to explore little beaches, cliffs and the little church on the hillside. The church is no longer used for mass but many come to light candles and pray. Candles were lit for little Madeleine McCann on New Years Day as they were in other towns along the way. When we tired of wandering around we lazed by the heated swimming, ordered baguettes and lemonades and listened to the Atlantic Ocean roll onto the golden sand or to Elvis, Gerry and the pacemakers, Chattanooga choo choo etc in the bar (you can tell what age group and ethnicity the hotel caters for).

Harry was keen to visit Gibralter – the day we went turned out to be a very wet and cold –it was a reasonably long day sitting in a 60 seater bus and not being able to see much because of the rain or the dark. Gibralter was fascinating in a funny sort of way. We needed our passports to cross the frontier from Spain but it was sufficient to wave them in front of the customs officer while saying ‘yes I have a passport’ . We then ran across the runway (yes the runway of the international airport) before finding the main street of this tax free haven. The street is like a large international airport full of jewellery shops, perfumeries, expensive clothes and electronic goods though far more attractive than any airport I know. You can use either English or Gibralter pounds or Euros to purchase all your goodies and then wander back through customs without them really looking to see how you've bought. We took a guided tour around the rock – with a bus driver who kept saying ‘you can’t see nothing – terrible terrible weather – very very hazy’. It is a place that you could spend 2 days exploring (the 5 kms of tunnels made in the rock during war time), the only castle built in about 1200, the limestone caves and at the same time wondering at that mix of old, 60’s and 70’s buildings, the poorer areas and the rich. 60,000 people live in a very small area about 6 square kilometres. Monkeys live in the reserve free to come and go as they please. It is assumed that the Moors (arabs) brought them over in the 1700’s. The legend is as long as the monkeys stay in Gibralter so will the English. So they have great care, the bus driver led us to believe better than many of the residents. Once numbers grow too big they are sold to zoos etc (300 were recently sold to German zoos). Lots of signs about not feeding them and fines of £500 (us kiwis know why - diet, learning to fend for themselves etc) but the bus driver ignored this and handed them dried pasta out the window.

Portugese have novel speed cameras. If you are caught speeding a red light comes on and you are required to stop - the time you have to stop depends I think on how far over the limit you went - an instant punishment though I gather there is nothing stopping you from going through the red light if you can't be bothered waiting. In Lisbon they are just trialling the good old ‘money earning’ speed cameras that we know in England and back home and the authorities are apparently warming to this new form of revenue collection so it is just possible the novel method might be in decline.

The colour of Portugal is white. Houses have a trim around the window sills and doors and the colour is significant. Blue is for scaring away the devil and ex fisherman also have blue to remind them of the sea. Pink is for romance and love, red for good luck, green for hope. Although, not stated there were lots of houses with yellow and gold and I think that is possibly the colour for success and money. We wondered what the neighbours would think when the residents changed from pink to another colour!! Would the rumours start? Many centuries ago a prince brought his Swedish princess back to Portugal. She was very homesick in winter and longed for snow so ordered the planting of lots of almond trees. In winter they are covered in white flowers which when the wind blows look like snow drops. She was never homesick again. Chimneys signify wealth – the more chimneys the house the richer you are. The tale goes that when the Romans landed and tried to prohibit the Moors from practising their Islam, they built their mosques and masqueraded them as chimneys. They certainly have an Islamic look about them.
Cork is a major business in Portugal. It is illegal to cut down a cork tree. They take 25 years to grow before you can take cork and then you can only take cork off it every 9 years, and not off all the tree as you would kill it. Each cork tree is marked with the year it was last stripped. The cork tree drops acorns and there is a little black pig that is fed solely on these almonds. Apparently, when this pig is smoked and preserved it tastes exceptional. We saw a large number of these pigs hanging in a shop at a cost of 62 euros a leg and the only sign in English was ‘Do not touch these you will get dirty’. We did taste some ham one night which could be this expensive pork and decided that it must be quite an acquired taste.

One day we took a day trip through the countryside and down a river in the afternoon. We were picked up by a very Scots man, strong accent, long hair and beard, immediate impression was Billy Connolly. Very talkative, told us lots of jokes and bits about the country, took us through little villages before we joined up with the rest of the tour. He is another man about our age, wanting a change from the routine work he had been doing for a long time in Scotland. We changed guides when we met up with the others and although there were a collection of Dutch and English speaking people in the jeep the tour guide spoke none of these languages – so when the rest stopped and got a commentary he was silent. At one point he pointed and said 'Spain'. Later on I asked an English speaking tour guide about what was significant and found that 'Spain’ was actually a huge resort of 5000 beds in Spain built around a golf course. Apparently now, Portugal is stopping these developments – well done Portugal. On the river cruise coming back we saw another construction that would take 56000 beds for those interested in golf and sunning themselves. Unbelievable. Lunch on the safari was memorable – leek and potato soup, peri peri chicken and salad, oranges and local entertainment some even in Portugese. We met two Scottish families both had rellies in NZ and one a sister lives in the same town as my Mum – small world isn’t it and a dutch couple had a daughter who worked as a shearer on a NZ farm but now is based in Aussie. From the wildlife perspective it was special, and apparently quite unusual to see Flamingos in the wild and stalks nesting in specially prepared platforms above lamp posts and power lines.

EU has made big changes in Portugal like:

• The smoking ban came in on 1 January, but they still subsidise tobacco farmers in the north of Portugal.
• They subsidise orange plantations which are very expensive to grow here as they need lots of irrigation and soil (mainly rock around here).
• Carob besides chocolate substitute is used to feed animals, as a natural sweetener (and lots of other things I can't remember). As their seeds are almost exactly the same weight, they were used to weigh things and that is were carot comes from as a measure of gold.
  

Portugal is known for its ceramics and it really wasn’t until we got to Lagos that we saw some great examples. The houses in Armacao de Pera were sometimes tiled, but they looked a bit like the tiles that we did our bathrooms in back in the 60’s and 70’s. In Lagos, the street signs were all done in tiles, and most of the houses had some form of tile around the doors or walls. Not all spectacular to look at but it was effective when looking down streets. After the devastation of the earthquake it was rebuilt and there were fine examples of 200 year old buildings including the town wall and the fort beside the marina. There was a statue of St Barbara who wanted to convert to Christianity in the 1800’s – her father locked her up in a room to prevent this but apparently a priest managed to get in and she converted. Her father decided to behead her because of it – but God judged him and he was hit by lightening and died. Had a nice fish lunch – second time in my life I’ve eaten fish that look at me while I eat them (first time was new years eve with a plate of sardines) – I didn’t look at it and it tasted just fine – that with olives, cheeses, wine and oranges make good cuisine in Portugal. Across the marina we spied a number of cats. Thought at first that they were wild, but they didn’t seem scared of people walking passed. We then spied what looked like little kennels and thought that they were probably put there to kill the vermin from all the fishing fleet – they looked quite well fed.



It was a long trip home and with the pilot telling us it was 2 degrees in Bristol we didn't have much incentive to get on the plane. But 2 degrees with no wind chill factor and no rain actually is bearable and after grocery shopping we settled in cosily with good books and laptop to catch up on all the news and to relax. Work again tomorrow...but lots to continue to look forward to.

Our first Christmas in Bristol

Well I did it. I managed to get an English bug two days before the end of work and have coughed and sneezed my way through Christmas and Boxing day to the next weekend. The doc said that it could last a month - and what did I expect coming to a country with 60 million people living in one island. Where was that English sympathy? At least the cough medicine worked so should be grateful for some things from the National Health Service - and of course it is free if you don't count the tax you pay. The few days I was in bed before Christmas were sunny but icy. As I lay in the bedroom in the sun I noticed that our car windows had continued to remain icy all through the day and so was slightly sympathetic when Harry came home from work saying it was cold out there - about 2 degrees at 4.00. One day when I was feeling not too bad we went for a short walk around where we live. Rugby was on (Bristol is sitting top equal on the Heineken Cup ladder) and so we walked with lots of fans along a number of streets. We weren't really dressed for 2 hours sitting in the cold so didn't go into the stadium but will one day. Our walk wasn't through a very exciting part really (the houses were pre/post war prefabs and apparently are being demolished due to anti social behaviour). They are little one bedroom prefabs with a little garden etc more than what so many people have in Bristol. Went to the new swimming pool - nice complex, but again realised that this is one of probably only 2 swimming pools in Bristol that is available for public use compared to how many we have in Wellington - our children seem to have so many more opportunities.

Mike and Becks arrived on Christmas Eve and that cheered me up no end. It was somehow very comforting to have familiar voices around the house when I wasn't feeling too good. We ate alot over the next 3 days and managed to show them a bit of the city between raindrops. On Christmas day Haz acted as tour guide while I spent the afternoon in bed. They went to the floating dock and suspension bridge and Harry surprised himself on how much he knew about Brunel and the river etc and how he could get to places now without getting lost. Becks had a great time in Bangkok and we enjoyed looking at her photos (got some nice suits made there too) and Michael talked about his trip to Munich, his visit to see Manuel and the upcoming New Years Eve party (not sure I really want to know the details). Christmas evening we played cards and 'trivial pursuit' with chocolates (a birthday present for Harry). With questions like 'What bar did Mary meet Frederick in?' and 'What colour was Christopher Columbus's hair?' it is hardly surprising we took a long time to win a chocolate each!!!

Boxing Day - Mike wanted to see Stonehenge. Becks spent her 12th birthday there. Still a fascinating sight the second time round for us. It seems to be a place where there will always be people no matter what the weather - in some ways its the intrigue for me of 'why is it really there'. We couldn't resist showing Mike and Becks Avebury as well - not quite as spectacular stone wise but covers a rather larger area with the little village inside. Mike amused himself with taking a video and providing a commentary while we walked around (it is on his facebook if anyone is interested interested)


Day three of Mike and Becks visit was a quiet day, Becks went to see some relatives at the zoo (they live in Bath but were showing some littlies the animals) and we took Mike for a bit more a tiki tour. It was sad waving goodbye to them but we got ourselves busy and went home to open our christmas presents from New Zealand (I didn't want to open them till I felt better and could enjoy them) and it was good timing as it helped us to occupy those first few minutes when we realised some special people had gone.

Anyway this Christmas holiday we learnt a few things. English spent £84 million online on Christmas Day alone. Harrods sold £10,000 worth of goods every minute in the first hour of the boxing day sales. We washed our new dark brown sheets with towels, pillow cases, tops and socks and now everything except the sheets are mauve!

A geological marvel

Christmas is near – and our work lunches and dinners not to mention birthday’s have seen us eating heaps and enjoying people's company during the week. On Monday after work we ventured into Newport to eat Italian with Anne, Elspeth and Keith and to celebrate Anne getting a year older. Once the waitress found out where we were from she asked the standard question ‘Why are you here?’ with that amazement in her voice that we have found so common over here. I think I have said before that we now realise what a priviledged position we are both in – able to work in a different country (even though only for a few years) yet to have the right to return to another one which is so special or of course Australia which is so much warmer. We are all going back to NZ for short trips, Keith and Elspeth leave just a few days before us in February while Anne in January – just can’t keep away!! Tonight Mike has left to come over to see us for Christmas via Munich and a few days skiing. Becks leaves tomorrow via Thailand and with luck with the weather and british transport we will all be together for Christmas day. We also managed to find ourselves some airfares to Brussels to see Mike and Becks in January. It took a while, firstly we found £200 ones from Bristol, then 1 pence ones from Stansted and then £10,000 from Cardiff (with 2 nights accommodation thrown in). The 1 p ones were quite tempting -but a 3 and a half hour car drive to catch a 6.00 in the morning flight and returning at 11 in the evening and then another drive didn't sound that appealing. We thought there must be something better. So we slept on it and the next day found some £47 ones from Heathrow at a reasonable hour so jumped at them. We got carried away then and we found some cheap flights for two of the bank holidays next year - so have heaps to look forward to. I walked to work one day as my work was having their Christmas lunch was and I didn’t fancy riding my bike half way across town. The morning was frosty, car windows had a sheet of thick ice across them, the footpath was all sparkling and the sun was coming up. A group of allotments on the hillside looked in the morning darkness like a minature shanty town. The lunch was in a restaurant in an area that we walked when we first arrived in Bristol. It feels quite bizarre going back to places, that when we first looked at were amazed by the garden or the architecture or the narrow street, but now is just ‘part of our daily existence’. Harry’s Christmas dinner was the next evening in an area we hadn’t been before – needless to say we got lost but not quite as spectacularly as we used too. We danced the night away (one of the last to leave) and requested songs like Grease lightening so we didn’t have to dance to the latest music. The young ones equally seemed to enjoy the ‘older’ songs. Quite unexpectantly we woke up early on Saturday and since it was a cloudy day with no rain we decided to take off to Quantock Head. What a geological marvel. It is a stretch of coastline sitting between Burnham on Sea and Minehead. Both these places have little to offer unless you are into Hi de hi holidays or living in terraced houses that you can find in the cities - but Quantock is quite different.

Quantock Beach is quite a few miles long and around 200 million years old. The beach is rocky but the layers of stone, slate and dirt have come together over time to create a magical wonder. We were lucky enough to arrive at low tide (no planning there) and could walk on some of the smooth stones and look at the more rugged ones. The pictures speak for themselves really. We sat sharing a cup of tea (we forgot the other cup!!) just enjoying the scenery and the colours. I've decided I really must get another hat!!


The walk took us along the cliffs and then though farmland and down muddy lanes. The farmer had left a notice on the gate to say someone had reported him for including ragwort in his hay - he mentioned that he had explained to 'the authorities' all that he had done to try and eradicate it. Probably felt a bit pipped that he had opened up his property to walkers and then someone had complained. We didn't really know what ragwort was but looking it up on the net tonight, it is a noxious plant and 1kg can kill a horse. It grows biannually and can only grow in unharvested fields - looking at the pictures there was quite alot down the muddy tractor paths where many a horse had trod (Sherlock could tell by hoof prints and other evidence). We also passed other crops (I think probably turnip) and a grass that had a bamboo stalk but a top like a toi toi. We walked into Quantock East a cute little village with thatched cottages, little lake, ducks and a few christmas decorations.

It was getting close to dusk and so we decided to take a quick trip to Minehead before heading home - and we found - Dunster castle. One of those places we must go to once the National Heritage has finished doing their renovating. Wonderful wooden staircase (which showed an intricate hunt scene) and the ceilings (the detail which we have never seen before). While others lined up to see that little fat man in red, or to buy Christmas decorations, we wandered around with our eyes peeled to the ceilings - lucky we didn't trip over any little ones. The elderly gentleman who spoke to us, because we were obviously interested in the building, said that it had been built in the 1600's and that the ceilings and staircase were originals. At one stage someone had painted the staircase but this had been stripped back to the elm and oak. The bannister was so smooth and shaped like a water slide and I was tempted to let Caramello have a slide down but somehow didn't think the little man showing us around would approve.

On the way home, we missed the turning for our place - was it Junction 18 or 19 we discussed as we flew past 20 and 21 which would have been far more direct.

Sunday morning - a truck got stuck in our street - just when I had decided a lie in was in order. I am not sure what the driver was trying to do - but after edging their way between cars (not scratching one I might add) I think the driver wanted to turn left. There was heaps of reverse beeping going on before he decided to give it a miss and slowly continue through the narrow street to the end. About an hour later he came back along our street - maybe he wanted another challenge - or perhaps just wanted to wake up those that hadn't been woken the first time!! This afternoon was cold so all wrapped up (Harry in his woollen jersey from NZ, Tui scarf and balaclava and both of us in polyprops from Kathmandu) we went to Bristol Zoo. It is quite a smallish zoo on the flat and they have done a reasonable job of giving the animals as much space as they need. After we saw the flamingos we came across two keas and all I could think was 'you are a long way from home'. Funny, it just didn't feel right that they were there. It has never occurred to me before when I look at lions, tigers, zebras, bears etc that they are also perhaps shouldn't be there. Anyway the notice said that 'Bristol Zoo owns the european studbook for Keas' and told the story of an innocent tourist leaving his car in the park near a national park down south and coming back to it with the wipers, chrome strips ripped off. The zoo had heaps of reptiles and spiders but most of the animals we had seen before except two Opaki which belong to the giraffe family - their rear end is like a zebra and their children follow their parents by recognising the stripes. (Can you believe we forgot to take a photo of them - so courtesy of the web - which also told us there was an Opaki school in the Wairarapa which I think we have passed).