We woke up to the alarm clock this morning and didn't want to get out of bed. We soon found out that my travel alarm clock has a snooze interval of 4 minutes compared to the 8 minutes of my one at home. I wasn't impressed but we dragged ourselves out of bed after about 2 1/2 snoozes when we couldn't bear the thought of another one.
After coating all the exposed bits of skin in 6 hour water resistant factor 30 sunscreen we headed over to reception to get a taxi.
Apart from tailgating, and being on his mobile phone at the same time as driving on the pavement, and giving the impression of not really knowing where we were going, the taxi journey was fine. When we arrived, the driver dropped us off a bit further down the road than we wanted to go because he'd just washed his taxi and didn't want to get it dusty on the car park!
He surprised us by asking how we were getting back later, and promising to pick us up at 6pm, reinforcing this with numerous "don't worry's".
We collected our kayak and were soon on the water.
The kayak was a sit on top kayak, which in my opinion is a cross between an open canoe and a kayak (which is closed in). I think they're popular because they're idiot proof. If you capsize, the boat won't sink, will hardly fill with water, and you can't really get stuck underneath or inside it. On the downside, they do seem rather heavy and you get wet. Especially if you sit at the back like Claire did!
The water we were paddling on was a section of sheltered sea between the main coast and the numerous sandbar beach islands here. When we set off it was very calm with hardly any wind. We made good progress, although were a bit disappointed by the lack of waterfowl, and stopped at a town called Santa Luzia for lunch. Santa Luzia is known for serving the best octopus on the Algarve. We parked the boat outside a restaurant on the seafront called "Casa do Polvo" and found ourselves a table where we could watch for boat thieves.
We soon discovered that the menu was entirely in Portuguese, with no English translation or even clues. Fortunately, a friendly waitress who we think was German or Dutch saw us looking perplexed and said "do you need help?". Claire was scared of trying octopus because she'd had a previous bad (rubbery) experience so opted for lamb chops. I was up for it and left myself to the mercy of our multilingual waitress who recommended grilled octopus.
Our food arrived, and Claire had serious food envy after trying one of my tentacles. My meal was probably the best I've had in Portugal this year or last and is definitely recommended. We'd be going back if it was nearer.
We headed back towards our start point. The tide had turned and there were a lot more poking birds on the shore. The wind had picked up and was in our favour so it was easy paddling. We went just past where we started out and landed on a beach for a while and did some swimming and laughing at a small boy called Pedro trying to paddle the biggest ever rowing boat in the wind. I think his dad was training him, as he was obviously keeping a close eye on him but not helping. Either that or he just wanted to sunbathe on his big boat!
Our last half an hour on the water was hard work, paddling into the wind and waves and getting soaked.
We were back a little bit early, and dutifully waited for our promised taxi until 5 past 6, before giving up and getting the local hotel reception to phone us one.
We thought that our promised taxi wouldn't turn up but we were both hoping that he'd surprise us and be there waiting for us.
As it happened, the new taxi was a much newer, cleaner taxi and we had a relaxed journey back which cost us less than this morning's trip going the other way.
We felt a lot better when we got back and washed off the layers of thick greasy sunscreen and the salt. We didn't get sunburnt though!
We have hired bikes for the next few days so will be going over to the neighbouring town of Tavira and doing some more bird watching on the salt flats.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Ria Formosa nature reserve
Ooo it's like reading my own personalised travel guide. Casa do Polvo sounds divine x
ReplyDelete