 Nothing
is more important on a holiday than refusing to be hurried. Even if
one has only a week or two out of the other 52 working-like-a-dog
days in life's calendar, it is prudent to spend them in pursuits
like peeling a sweet Portugal orange on a sun-soaked balcony in
Albufeira, while the winds off the Atlantic blow freshness and
energy back into your soul.
I suspect that's why I found so many winter-weary Maritimers in
the
Algarve province in
Portugal
last month. It's the new
Florida or Cuba for many from the Metro Moncton area, since air
fare plus two weeks at a super-nice apartment still comes in at
$1,409 per person plus tax. It's considerably cheaper on a per day
basis if you're one of the lucky ones staying for two or three
months.
"You're from New Brunswick aren't you," says the gentleman on the
bus to my husband Bill as we settle into the seat behind him.
(Public transit is cheap and very convenient; it's not necessary at
all to have a car there.)
"I saw your Times & Transcript T-shirt," he says. Turns out our
new friend, Jean-Paul Goguen from Cocagne, is now on his fifth full
winter in Portugal.
"There's no place like it for the winter," he smiles. "The food
is good, the wine is cheap, and I have made many friends here."
There are four people from Moncton on our bus to
Lisbon the next day. We had actually been prompted to go to
Portugal this year to visit fellow Maritimers and long-time friends
Rocky and Claire Stultz of Moncton. Rocky had been my co-worker at
Canadaeast.com and was spending the first season of a well-earned
retirement with a long-stay visit there.
No writer can adequately take in a country's joys and sorrows in
just two weeks, or express it in one short article. But I can
summarize the things that impressed me the most in this rectangular
sea-bound country that shares the Iberian Peninsula with its
long-time rival,
Spain.
Obsessed as we New Brunswickers are with weather, let's start
with that. Portugal, which measures 560 kilometres north to south
and 225 kilometres east to west, is similar in latitude to
Washington, D.C. or
San Francisco. That means that during the deadliest parts of our
winter, it's more like the month of September, with sunny warm
afternoons but chilly nights. Pack T-shirts and fleece.
The short version of Portuguese history centres on the rise and
ebb of good fortune from the sea and the success and failures of
fending off invaders. In 1560 you could sail from Lisbon to
China without ever
losing sight of Portuguese-claimed land; now they've lost all that
but kept their special affinity with
Brazil.
The Romans and the Moors were among their invaders, always
seeking to take advantage of the country's tremendous natural
resources. Today's invaders are much more polite, arriving on planes
and buses and armed only with passports and credit cards, but they,
too, seek to take advantage of its resources: the climate, the
oranges, and the reasonable accommodation and food prices.
More than 42 per cent of the tourists in Albufeira in Algarve
province alone are British, but the number of Canadians is rapidly
growing. You can find a number of them on any given evening in a
place on Montechora ("The Strip") called BJ's Canadian bar. Owner
Pat Ferreira, a charmer born in Alberta, raised in
Quebec and over there living with his Portuguese grandfather,
packs on average 25 happy expatriates into his place each evening.
The bar's size is about equal to the walk-in closet of an upscale
subdivision home in Moncton.
Bill and Rocky are among those who settle in for Hockey Night in
Canada there, which starts at midnight Portuguese time. We have
brought Pat, on Rocky's request, licence plates from New Brunswick
and Nova Scotia to add to his collection on his walls, and the
sheepskin Elmer Fudd hat from HBC worn by Canadian athletes during
the Winter Olympics. He's so happy he insists on beer on the house,
which he serves on this warm Portugal evening while wearing the hat.
His e-mail, in case you are going, is bjs_bar@hotmail.com.
If you can't take all the available tours, the one you can't miss
is a walk to the edge of the earth at Cabo St. Vincent, the most
southwestern tip of Europe.
Be shocked at the raw courage of the traditional Portuguese
fishermen who cast their lines from the rocky ledges that tower high
above the swirling, unforgiving Atlantic Ocean.
Buy fresh apricots and figs or even a reasonably priced woolly
sweater from the merchants who set up their kiosks while you
concentrate on climbing the mountain.
Portugal is doable even for picky eaters. If you like fish,
chicken or lamb, you'll be a happy traveller. Go to almost any
restaurant and order Piri-Piri Chicken, quite possibly the best way
in the world to eat poultry. It is a grilled chicken dish served
with a dipping sauce of olive oil and peppers so hot they boil your
eye sockets. Price is about $5 Canadian in your average family
diner. Finish the meal with papos de anjo (angel's breasts), an egg
and spun sugar concoction that gives new dimension to the word
"decadent."
If you want to see something macabre, take in the chapel of bones
in Evora, a heritage village in the mountains. At the entrance to
the chapel is a Portuguese message which, translated, says "We bones
in here wait for yours to join us." Inside, human bones and more
than 5,000 human skulls stare hauntingly from the walls and arches.
In the 13th century, three monks with a message against
anti-commercialism, unearthed all these bones from various
churchyards and built a chapel with them to remind us how it all
ends.
The most beautiful and largest city in Portugal is Lisbon, which
can be visited in a day from Albufeira, but you will likely want to
spend longer. The Paris of the Portuguese world, its public art, its
amazing architecture and spirit of survival after being levelled in
an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in 1755 are amazing.
 Mingled
with the mountains and yellow-ocre porous cliffs, the bars and the
bistros and the old cobblestone streets of the many little villages,
the hillsides of almond, olive and orange trees, are the
ever-constant glimpses of beaches. The best beach walk I encountered
was the Fishermen's Beach in Old Town, Albufeira. Our friends took
us there for refreshments on our first day and as we sat at the
little bar that operates out of an abandoned hotel at the edge of
the Atlantic Ocean, I fell in love with this country and never
looked back.
Did I mention the storks? Gorgeous, graceful birds with their
magnificent nests were perched on top of church towers and modern
light standards, never a care if it was city or country. A protected
species, these huge birds were undisputed kings of the sky. Most are
white, soaring under the clouds, but the rarest and the most
startling are the black ones.
It is now spring in the Algarve, and we must say goodbye, leaving
our old and new friends with sadness. Even on the short trip to the
airport, the beauty of this extremely clean country stirs me. The
landscape is ablaze with colour, especially the white and purple
rock roses and the brilliant Bermuda buttercups. I fix this image in
my head as we head back to the cold spring rains of Canada.
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